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If you’re one of my regular visitors, you know that I completed my first National Novel Writing Month last November, and submitted The Renegade’s Door to my first potential publisher in April after four months of revision.

If you’re just tuning in for the first time… welcome to the insanity . Renegade is out in search of its own success or failure, and for the time being, its destiny is out of my hands. So it’s time to turn my attention to the next book. As author Holly Lisle often says, if you want to be an author, “your career lies in writing a book, and writing another book, and writing a book after that.”

So. Onward. But how exactly does one prepare to write a book? I’m no expert, and from what I have read everyone has their own methods when it comes to writing fiction. I’ll tell you how I’m approaching my next novel, and  how I got ready for the last one. It may not work for every aspiring author, but it might work for you. If not… try something else .

For my next novel I’ll be staying in the same world I developed for Renegade, Doormakers’ Fall, and Voices of the Deep. This is an arbitrary choice on my part, but I have my reasons. The world already exists, complete with maps, rules of nature, and a timeline of significant historical events and characters. But perhaps most importantly, one of the characters introduced in my last novel has a story to tell.

In fact ever since Renegade ended, Eliza has been prodding at my subconscious mind in cryptic conversations like this one.

“Hey… yeah you!”

“What… who are… wait a minute. I know you. What are you doing in my office?”

“More importantly what are you doing in your office? Or should I say what aren’t you doing…”

“This is insane… I’m going insane… ”

“Get over it. You do know that you’re not done… right?”

“Not done? What are you talking about? I just sent out the manuscript!”

“I know that! Why do you think I let you slide this long?”

“Slide? Slide! Oh wow… am I really having an argument with a fictional character?”

“Very funny. Yes slide, as in take a break. Well your ember kissing break’s over pal!”

“You might want to be bit nicer to me. You do remember what happened to my last protagonist don’t you?”

“Did you… how… do you think I could forget?”

“I… I’m sorry Eliza. If there was any other way to end it…”

“Yeah. I know. But it’s not over. Did you think you could just leave me in the desert!”

“Leave you? I didn’t leave… you’re with Kenbo and Kenji!”

“Oh great. Thanks so much for that!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Get back to work and I’ll tell you. You know where to find me.”

“Wait! Where did she…”

There have been lots of little quips like that over the past few months. Even if I did want to write a different story, I’m not sure Eliza would let me. Sometimes it’s nice to have opinionated characters. So I’m gearing up for another dive into the Doormakers’ world, this time with Eliza as my guide.

NaNo was an excellent motivator for me to get through the first draft of Renegade, so I’m going to try to duplicate my success by participating in JulNoWriMo. Between now and July 1, I’ll be laying the groundwork for Eliza’s story. This involves a lot of navel gazing, and endless conversations with Eliza. The first step is to discover the overall story arc.

This is tricky. Eliza knows some of it, but can’t (or won’t) tell me everything. So I try to tease out the direction of the plot by asking what she wants to achieve, starting with the last place I left her at the end of the previous book. Some of her goals are pretty obvious, but there are complications or obstacles that come up. Her efforts to overcome those challenges leads to new goals, new issues, and new character interactions. Some of her goals are long term. Some of them conflict directly with the historical timeline of the world. I have to tread lightly around issues like that, and let Eliza make her opinions known but respect the requirements of the world in which she lives.

This process is iterative. It can take days or weeks. I recently took my journal with me on a long backpacking trip and spent several isolated days penning potential story arcs. What I’ve got so far is coming together, but there are still pieces where I’m not happy with the causality or the flow just doesn’t feel right yet. When I hit a wall like that I describe the pertinent section of plot to friends whose opinion I trust. I listen to their impressions. And then I tinker. And tinker some more. For me this is the most creative part of the novel writing process. It forms the foundation of my outline (and yes, I do write from outlines).  Getting this part right is essential.

After I have the story arc sketched out, my next step is to write character and setting descriptions. The story arc tells me which characters and locations are needed to move the story to its conclusion. For me these descriptions usually start with pictures. Sometimes I use pictures of friends and family. Other times I look for inspiration from photos on the web: faces, clothing, buildings, landscapes, animals both familiar and exotic.

The third step for me is developing scenes and prioritizing them. The story arc is usually developed chronologically: an obstacle is overcome in order to attain a goal, which leads to the next obstacle and the next goal, etc. But the first scene chronologically may not be the most important scene, and it might not be the first scene in the book. Some scenes are historical background, important for character development and context but not critical for moving the action forward. These scenes can be referred to in dialog or possibly used as flashbacks to balance the pace of more intense parts of the narrative. Some scenes (especially in epic multi-character works) happen simultaneously in different geographical locations, and you have to make choices about how much of each scene to reveal to your readers and when to reveal it. It can get complicated. Personally, I put my scenes on 3×5 cards, each with a one sentence description and a scene title (possibly color coded if I’m feeling abitious). Then I move the cards around on a white board until I have a skeleton story outline that I’m happy with.

Once my scene board is up, I start outlining, adding details to the one sentence blurbs in the skeleton until I have encapsulated the setting, the characters involved, how they are going to interact, the focus or intent, and the key change that signals the end of one scene and the beginning of the next. Some authors don’t like using outlines because it feels too confining, or limits their creativity. If they can write novel length fiction extemporaneously like that, more power to ‘em. Personally, I need a road map. I choose to look at story arc building and outlining as my best opportunity to embed creativity in the story.

This becomes really critical when you are participating in a novel marathon like NaNo or JulNo. Generating 1500-2000 words per day every day and getting to the end of your story in just 30 days is difficult enough without writing blind. Which begs the following question: why do it? That’s easy. Before NaNo I spent over a year writing a story without mapping, planning, and outlining it first. I was constantly writing myself into dead ends. And I also kept falling into the trap of rewriting previous scenes before writing new ones. After more than a year I had about 90,000 words and only half of a novel. It wasn’t a total loss: now I think of that period as a giant world building exercise that helped me grow the Doormakers’ world.

By contrast, after NaNo I had a 54,000 word first draft, a complete novel from start to finish. I’ll never write blind again. And the structure of a deadline helps too. What’s my next deadline? June 30th: outline, scene board, character and setting descriptions for Eliza’s story, the sequel to The Renegade’s Door. Maybe then Eliza will let me get some sleep.

Filed under: Journal