Isaiah, 2YN Week Four: Goals and Conflict

This assignment was easy for me, as well. I knew what the primary conflict of the story was going to be from the beginning, and since the type of story I decided to write fit most closely with that original concept, I didn't have to change it. Choosing the conflicts was a bit harder, and defining them well enough to put them into a concise sentence was the real challenge. I finally have something I'm happy with, though, and I'm very pleased that I've done two assignments in two days, without feeling like I'm doing a half-arsed job on them.

The assignment is posted here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/36328.html. I also included something Zette did herself in this chapter, but which wasn't part of the assignment. It was a basic, three part structure (beginning, middle and end.)

While thinking conflicts out, though, I also jotted down a preliminary timeline so that I could see what I thought would happen when. That's available here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/36570.html

This assignment made me realise something else, though, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I write primarily fantasy, which tends to have larger-than-life conflicts. The world is almost always at risk. And I really like that about fantasy. I enjoy reading it, and I enjoy writing it. But repeatedly in my own work, the threat to the world seems like it's always secondary, a MacGuffin. It looks important, but really what matters is the internal conflict of the main character. For example, in this story I'm still not sure who the antagonist is or what's going to be happening (other than in my character's head) at the climax of the book, but it doesn't seem to matter. All that stuff is, really, is a catalyst for the change of the main character, which is the real point. It's like I'm writing introspective fiction disguised as action stories.

Maybe that's just what "character-driven" means. I know I prefer to read stories where what happens to the character is the most important part. While I enjoy plot-driven stories sometimes, if the character's essentially the same, inside, at the end as the beginning I usually don't feel very satisfied. But I worry - does this mean that I don't have enough plot? Am I getting lazy and just not developing the action enough and it really should matter? Am I using this as an excuse for vagueness?

I don't know how to answer these questions. A good story, well edited, makes the events it contains look inevitable. Perhaps it's okay to be unsure at this point, and for the external action to follow the internal action in my mind. These are the kinds of questions and realisations that I was hoping this whole project would bring up, so I'll just be aware of it for now and see where the future exercises take me.

Isaiah, 2YN Week Three: Theme

This one was easy for me. I love working with theme, and that's often one of the first things, after character, that comes to me. It's the touchstone I use throughout the writing process, and it's just naturally the way I think about what I write.

I didn't already have a theme for Isaiah, but it didn't take more than a few hours of brainstorming to come up with one I like, and that I think works with the plot elements, tone and characters I already have. Which is good - I really don't want this to actually take the whole two years!

So, my theme, in one word, is Faith.
Expanded: Faith is the gateway to the extraordinary.

Edit: Before anyone thinks I'm writing a scary religious book, by "faith" I don't mean religion but the basis of religion - a combination of belief and trust. You can have faith in anything.

Isaiah, 2YN Week Two: Genre

Though making these kind of big-picture kind of decisions at the beginning of the process has been difficult for me and felt a bit unnatural at first, I think I'm learning to really like the idea. Taking the time to answer these questions - "What's your idea?", "What kind of book are you writing?", "What do you want to say?" - at the beginning, thoughtfully and thoroughly, is making me really analyse things and not just run ahead with an idea that's not as clear as I think it is. I think I'll be able to write a much stronger book because of it.

Asking for other people's opinions on my assorted summaries was an interesting experience. There was no consensus as to which type of story was the best or mose intriguing - in fact, I got one vote for each before I started to get any repeats. So there was no obvious answer, but everyone's reasons why they liked the ones they did, and their suggestions, were very helpful. In the end, #1 won with 3 votes. I was pleased with this because, based on other comments and my own ruminations, I had pretty much decided to go that route anyway, at least in tone and theme, while still pulling plot elements from some of the other summaries.

So - my genre will be urban fantasy, using magical elements such as shapechanging and vampirism in modern Reno. My tone/subgenre will be mythical.

Exploring Possibilities

So this week's assignment for the 2YN plan is to determine the genre & subgenre of your story. I know mine's urban fantasy - that's been clear to me from the first blush of the idea - but to me that doesn't narrow it down enough. Should it be truly fantastical - almost mythical - in the style of Charles DeLint or Jane Lindskold's Changer? Should it me more like a harboiled mystery, like Tanya Huff's Blood Ties series? Should it be dark, nearly horror, like her Smoke series? Should it be lighthearted and romantic, like Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series? Or could I shift the whole thing and make it science fiction, instead?

This had me completely stumped. How the heck should I know? I thought about it for ages (I actually started down this path during the last assignment, while trying to figure out the central conflict, so I was a bit dismayed to find out that this was the next task.) To me deciding what type of novel I wanted to write - genre and theme and plot - was all one huge dilemma, and I couldn't find any loose threads with which to start unravelling the knot. All of the options had potential, and none of them felt exactly right.

Finally I decided that what I needed to do was actually explore all of these possibilities rather than trying to decide which one was the perfect version of the story before moving on. So I'm writing a summary of the story specific to each - what? sub-sub-genre? tone? I'll just go with type - type of story and, at the end, I'll decide which one looks best or like the most interesting to write. It's actually going really well and it's a lot of fun.

This idea is probably ridiculously obvious to those of you who plot ahead of time, but it's kind of news to me. :) I guess that's why I'm doing this whole Isaiah exercise.

A Note on E-Piracy and The Two-Year Novel

Looking over my blog, DaWG M just remarked that by talking about borrowing a copy of The Two-Year Novel from DaWG S I'm advertising that we violated the terms of sale and have committed piracy. Just in case anyone else is concerned about this, I'd like to clarify things.

This is not an illegal copy of the book. I am currently using the only extant copy of this ebook acquired through the original purchase. The terms of sale state "No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means..." We did not reproduce the book except, perhaps, in the most technical sense. DaWG S attached the book to an email to me and then deleted her copy. I will be returning it to her when I've had a chance to try it out for a bit - without keeping a copy - and, if I've found the book helpful, buying my own copy then.

I don't want to deprive anyone of the income they've earned by producing and selling a good product. However, money is tight for me, as well. I don't have the ready cash to purchase every ebook I think I would like or use. Trust me, I'd have a lot more books by now if I could. :) Though I enjoy the convenience of ebooks and am aware that it's the only cost-effective way for some books to get into print, I strongly believe that publishing in an electronic format should not make it illegal for readers to preview or borrow books.

I'm not doing anything unethical. Whether I'm doing anything illegal is up to Lazette Gifford - but I hope she'll at least email me before she sues.

Isaiah, 2YN Week One: Idea

Wow, two posts in one night? How'd I manage that? Head for the bunkers, folks, the world's obviously about to end.

This was a whole lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought I had a solid idea, but when I tried to put it into words it became painfully obvious that I only had half of an idea, at best. I didn't have a central conflict or even a clue what kind of novel I wanted to write. I mean, I knew it was a fantasy, but dark? Romantic? Mystical? Hardboiled? I had no idea. I spent days trying to come up with something - anything - that gave me some insight into the basics of what this novel was about.

In the end, though I made some progress, I'm still not really sure. But rather than get hung up on trying to figure the whole novel out right now (which this whole having a plan to follow for developing the book thing was supposed to avoid, anyway) I decided to keep the idea a little vague, still, and hope that future exercises will help me figure it out.

I'm not sure I'm completely happy with it, but it's a starting point. I've posted it here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35247.html.

It's a private post - you will need a LiveJournal account and to be on my writing filter in order to see it. If you'd like to included on that filter, comment on my journal here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35026.html and I'll add you.