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.

One of Each, Please

So I finished my summaries, one for each type of urban fantasy I could think of. The only problem? I like them all, and I want to write them all. :) I'm letting them percolate, but I'm also curious to see what you lot think. Let me know which one or ones are your favourites, and, if you like, why.

Read here: http://skadhisgydhja.livejournal.com/35581.html

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.

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.

Isaiah, It's a Bit Early for Trouble, Innit?

So, the first step of the 2YN project is to come up with a sentence that describes the basic idea of your book, and then expand it into a 50 - 100 word paragraph. Every sample in the book is plot-based, and all I have so far is a character and a half and a vague scenario. And though I know it probably doesn't have to be a plot-based summary, "So there's this guy, and he meets this other person" just doesn't seem good enough somehow. :P So I'm trying to flesh it out a bit and come up with a general idea of what kind of book I want.

Which is all well and good, but in the middle of generating ideas for the plot I managed to question and possibly rearrange two major components of the parts I'd already decided on. Which, as I already mentioned, weren't exactly in abundance to begin with. Having since thought about it a bit more, I think I'm going to stay with my original idea for the characters (I was considering switching the genders of the two main characters) but an event I was assuming would occur long before the start of the book probably needs to happen during.

Anyway, all that and I'm still not sure what's actually going to happen in the book. I'm still hoping to have the assignment done by tomorrow sometime.

Bootstrapping My Writing, or Trying To

I'm taking a break from my projects, for now, and doing two new things to help get myself writing again.

The first is taking a new idea and experimenting with planning a book the organised way - from detailed character sheets to charting out my plot completely to determining my themes to blocking my scenes with all pertinent information - all before I start writing. For now, I'm calling the project "Isaiah" after one main character. I tend to be a largely organic writer, so I want to try this kind of process and see what I can learn from it. I'm also planning on blogging the process as I do it, so that I have a record of it later.

The second is a challenge on Forward Motion, a writing community started by Holly Lisle and maintained by Lazette Gifford. It's called "Story-a-Day" and, as the name implies, involves writing one short story every day for the month of May. You have to use the prompt generators given in the challenge, and every story has to be complete and over 500 words. I don't know if I'll manage to do it, but I think I'll have fun trying. If you want, you can read my stories as I post them here. You have to log in to the Forward Motion site to see them; this is because of rights protection. If you don't want to join Forward Motion but still want to read the horrid stories as I produce them this month, let me know and I can email them.

I did write a story last night, in my evening writers' group, and I've posted it as my first story. It's not great - it's really a partial scene from a longer work surrounded by summary, and it's written awkwardly because I was under a time limit - but I think the idea has some merit. I may actually end up using it as a seed for a longer work one day.