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How to Write 10,000 Words a Day, Part II (Luc Reid)

Writing

Yesterday, I posted novelist James Maxey’s response to the question “How do you write 10,000 words in a day?” Here are my own thoughts on the matter, from my experience writing that much and more. This was written before I read James’s take, but not surprisingly, it turns out that our responses have a lot of comment elements.

  1. Don’t expect the result to be publishable unless you have a lot of experience writing. That’s not to say that you won’t produce something that can eventually become publishable, or even that you’ll necessarily miss the mark even if this is your first attempt at long fiction, but if you are going to be miserable if your work isn’t terrific, you may want to think twice before trying to write at this speed.
  2. Be a fast typist. If you can’t type quickly already, you’ll want to do some typing tutorials to improve your speed before attempting 10,000 words in a day. In theory you can write over 1,000 words an hour if you only type 20 words per minute, but in practice you’ll need to do things like make quick fixes and notes, use the bathroom, and especially think. If you know you won’t be able to type at least 40 wpm, set your sites lower than 10,000 words per day. 5,000 words a day is still an amazing accomplishment, for example–and any personal record or completed piece is worth celebrating.
  3. Clear your schedule; remove all distractions. Don’t check e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter; turn off your phone; make sure you’re alone (or at least will be left alone); prepare food ahead if possible; take care of anything pressing that might otherwise interrupt you before you start.
  4. Have all the ingredients you personally need to drive the story forward. If you’re an off-the-cuff writer, that’s fine, but make sure you understand what you’ll need in terms of research, premise, setting, character ideas, plot ideas, or whatever else you use for starting stories. For instance, although I sometimes like to use outlines, if I come up with two interesting characters having an argument, I’m off and running: setting and plot can emerge for me out of those. Other people will need a few key scenes to shoot for, or will need to know the beginning and the ending. Yet others will need a full-blown outline. Know what you need. If you don’t have enough writing experience to know what you need yet, be willing to experiment, be comfortable with the idea that you may run out of steam, and keep a copy of The Writing Engine handy in order to use the troubleshooting section as needed.
  5. Don’t revise yet. If your story gets off track, you can go back as far as you need and restart from there (while still counting the discarded words in your daily count if you like), or you can go back and insert notes as to what future revisions you’ll need, but don’t try to go back and fix things: you’re likely to lose all of your momentum and begin getting bogged down in editing rather than creation.
  6. Have a vision. If you have a vision of what will make writing so much in such a short period of time wonderful for you (for instance, the excitement of having a finished novel draft, however rough, or exploring a story idea that you’ve been wanting to explore for a long time), you’ll have something to sustain you when you almost inevitably hit those moments of “This thing I’m writing is junk!” or “What am I doing this for, anyway?”
  7. Immerse yourself in the story. The more involved you are in the story and the more you care about spending time with the characters and “seeing” what happens to them, the more likely you’ll be able to keep up the pace, and the more likely you’ll be to create something your readers can be excited about, too. Just as importantly, immersion in your story is another way of saying that you’ve achieved flow, which means maximum productivity and high quality (see “Flow: What It Feels Like to Be Perfectly Motivated“).

Photo by lscan

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When a Failed Story Becomes a Great Story

Writing

There are stories that are just not well-conceived, stories that, unless they are completely altered, will never be successful. A story like this might have characters that don’t appeal, events that don’t satisfy, ideas that don’t engage, or they may just never connect emotionally with the reader.

Other stories are rough in early drafts, but with a limited number of changes become very effective. How do you tell the difference? Unfortunately, it’s not easy, and for the most part it’s a problem that’s similar to judging your work in the first place, with similar solutions (see “Your Opinion and Twenty-Five Cents: Judging Your Own Writing“).

Sometimes, though, it can be very hard to have faith that revision can make a big difference. As an example to demonstrate how it can, consider this account from Writers of the Future and Nebula winner Eric James Stone, originally mentioned on the Codex writing group and quoted with permission.

To understand the context, note that we regularly run writing contests on Codex in order to push ourselves, generate new work, and learn from the competition. Weekend Warrior is a yearly event there in which each participant writes a story of 750 words or less from prompts over a 60-hour period.

For 2009 Weekend Warrior, Round 2, I wrote a story I thought it was powerful and might do well in the contest, but I was wrong: 5.35 average [on a scale of 1-10 — Luc], 8th out of 17, closer to the bottom score of the round (4.06) than the top (7.47). It was my lowest point total of the five weeks, so it didn’t even count in my overall score for the contest. That was my biggest flop ever in WW. (I’ve had lower-scoring stories, but I didn’t think they were going to do well in the contest.)

I put it aside for over a year, then deleted three sentences, added ten, and edited seven. That lengthened the story by about 25% and allowed the powerful story that was in my head to come out more clearly. I sent it out and it sold to the first place I sent it [a major pro market — Luc], where it became one of the most-liked stories of all time (at least on their Facebook page): “Buy You a Mockingbird.”

Now, I’m not saying the contest score was wrong — I had not successfully conveyed what I wanted to convey, and I needed to edit the story later in order to make it work. What I’m saying is that sometimes a flop can be turned into a hit.

If you’re interested in Stone’s work, you may want to check out his story collection Rejiggering the Thingamajig.

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The Virtuoso Writer’s Cheat Sheet

Writing

A year or two ago on Codex, I put out some ideas for a kind of writing checklist, things to keep in mind that tend to be good questions to ask about a successful story. Some good additions and improvements were made, resulting in a very pithy list of questions that I post on my wall, “The Virtuoso Writer’s Cheat Sheet.” The idea is that anyone who can keep all of these things in their head at once and act effectively on them is pretty much a fiction virtuoso. For the rest of us, there are walls and scotch tape.

You may not agree with the implications of every one of these questions, and I hope you won’t think that every question is supposed to apply to every story. For instance, Sauron doesn’t have sympathetic traits, but he makes a pretty decent villain for a fairly popular story.

Regardless, asking myself these questions about my stories in progress or about stories that I’m about to edit is awfully useful to me, and maybe it will be to you, too. If you have a story that’s been rejected a number of times but that you particularly love, you might want to run it through this to see if it turns up any possible flaws or limitations you might not have noticed.

Much of this material is stolen (thank you Orson Scott Card, Stephen King, Codex members, Tim Powers, etc.) Comments are welcome.

Dialog
* Always some kind of conflict or tension?
* Stage directions subtle, but enough to prevent reader confusion?
* Distinctive character voices (diction, topics, vocabulary, personality, etc.)?
* Would a real person talk like this?
* Length of speech logical for the situation?
* Can reader tell who is speaking when?
* Everything said because of what the characters want, nothing strictly for the reader’s benefit?

Description
* Where’s the light coming from?
* Are several senses engaged on each page?
* Is the scene clear from the description alone, without your extra knowledge as the writer?

* Are descriptions specific, sensory, and fresh?

Opening
* Conveys character(s); at least a hint of conflict; and setting?
* Originality in first few paragraphs?
* Opening problem, hook, or other draw?

Title
* Not easily confused with the title of another book or story?
* Suggests the kind of story?
* Offers something intriguing or attractive?
* Sets the right tone?
* Easy for one person to pass on to another?

Ending
* Satisfying, yet unexpected?
* Resonates with beginning and/or theme of story?

Antagonist
* Has sympathetic traits?
* Actively trying to achieve a goal?
* Realistic motivation?
* Offstage time accounted for?

Language
* Leaving out unnecessary words or phrases?
* Mood and/or foreshadowing conveyed through word choice?
* Tension level conveyed through word size, flow, harsh/soft sounds?
* Active construction wherever possible?
* Use of strong verbs and nouns?
* Minimal use of adverbs and adjectives?
* Avoiding distracting repetitions (rare words only once in a book, non-structure words once in a paragraph or page)?
* Avoiding weak modifiers very, slightly, just, quite?
* Avoiding sensory crutch words like looked, appeared, seemed, heard, sounded?
* Avoiding self-contradictory language (impossibly tall, slightly unique)?

Protagonist
* Struggling with some important flaw?
* Sympathetic, likely to attract the reader?
* Actively trying to achieve a goal?
* If more than one, are they about equally engaging and sympathetic?
* Protagonist the person with the most to lose?
* Acts unusually, and shown in situations that demonstrate it?
Story concept
* Something significant that the reader might care about at stake?
* Both internal and external conflicts present?
* Taking into account reader expecations for genre/subgenre/story model?
* Decent capsule description of story automatically sounds compelling and attractive?
* Something about the story that’s attractive and enticing to readers?
* Character’s goals feel important to the reader?
* Has inherent conflict, or is the conflict just incidental?
* If a standard story type, doing something unique that justifies the story?
* Some elements of this story blow the cool meter?
* Powerful moments that create compelling, unusual images?

Plot
* Do mysteries naturally arise in the storyline without artificially withholding information?
* Inciting incident, character response, disaster?
* Driven by character, not author?
* Enough tension at any given moment?

Scenes
* Taking into account time of day in each scene?
* Describing an actual event rather than summarizing when possible?
* Each scene contributing to the story in at least two ways? (e.g. characterization + tension, immersiveness + stakes, etc.)
* Each scene essential to the story or strengthens/propels it?

Characters
* Readers care what happens to them?
* Names easily distinguished from one another?
* Based on an understanding of real people instead of on movies, other books, or stereotypes?
* Any characters who would be more effective if combined into one?
* Each important character has an implied past, friends, family, a job, something they would be doing if the story weren’t happening?

POV
* Chosen POV the most effective for this story?
* If first person, justified by the character having a distinctive voice or special way of seeing things?
* If not omniscient, is POV clear and consistent?
* Are changes in time, place, or POV character clearly tagged as such from the start?
* If multiple POV characters, are the transitions smooth?
* Do POV changes propel the reader on rather than making them start again cold?

Facts
* For scientific/tech details, math checked?
* Factual subjects handled accurately from knowledge or research?

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