Category: First Drafts

Posted in Deadlines, First Drafts

Writing: The Gift of Little Pieces

Posted on by beckylevine

I may have mentioned before that July seems to be a month of (wonderful) deadlines, and August is setting itself up to be that way. It would be easy, but depressing, to just let my fiction go and give into the panic worry that maybe there isn’t enough time for it all.

I’m trying to respond to that temptation with one word: Nonsense!

Not nonsense as in I’m Wonder Woman (whose new costume, I LOVE, btw!) and being able to do it all. But nonsense as in reminding myself that if I just take that hour of panic worry that I can easily use up in a single day, and give it to my fiction, well, hey, look: presto-magico…progress! And no depression. 🙂

And-as usual-I’m making a discovery along the way. This first draft I’m working on has its own moments of panic (yes, this time, PANIC) about where I’m going and how much I don’t know and how much I will have to weave together even when I DO know it and, oh, I could go on and on…. But guess what? The panic drops when I’m just working in little bits of time and pages.

I take one morning to plot out a new scene. All sorts of questions rise up to haunt me–“Oh, yeah, and where is THIS going to lead?” “You DO know this means you’ll be rereading those books about fancy-schmancy department stores?” “You’ve decided to write about a sabbath dinner after all, because…why?!”

Well, guess what? All I have to do that morning is plot that one scene. That evening, or the next morning, I can write it…or half of it. That afternoon, read just one chapter on department stores, for now. The next morning, plot that scene. And so on. When I’m not looking at hours of plotting and writing–all in one fell swoop–when there’s only so much time (and, oh, yes, panic) I can give to my fiction that day, it’s…easier.

Maybe it’s not the best way to immerse myself in the story, maybe it’s not the best way to get hundreds and thousands of fiction words onto the page. On the other hand, maybe it’s exactly how I need to be doing it this month.

Do you work best in small chunks or in long, dedicated hours? Are there times when one style works better for you than the other?

Have a wonderful writing week!

Posted in Character, First Drafts

Vagueness or: You Know, that…that…that…THING!

Posted on by beckylevine

When I critique, I make a lot of notes asking for an author to be more specific, more concrete, to come up with a tangible image or object or action to take place of a vague word or phrase. And when I revise my own work, frankly, I love the  magic that happens when I manage to find those vagueness in my writing and replace them with something a reader can touch, hear, see, taste, or smell.

This week I’ve been trying to work on my characters, because as I write my first draft, they’re driving me a bit nuts with their current state of vagueness. I’m finally, DEEPLY realizing the distinction between an action-driven plot and a character-driven plot. Every book, I think, has to have both, but in a mystery–for example–the need to find clues, investigate secrets, and interrogate suspects can drive the big events and actions that move that story forward. Yes, the protagonist had better have a personal goal, as well, but it’s not usually the top-level plot that the reader is following. That’s pretty much the kind of plot I’ve written before. In this WIP, the plot has to be driven by what my MC wants. Yes, of course, external events and actions by other characters will impact her big time, but when I’m looking for what she herself is going to do, or try to do, next, it’s got to be based on her personal goal. Her concrete, specific, tangible goal.

To keep with the theme, I’m going to give you a specific, concrete example. We all know bits and pieces of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. We know what it’s about…his dream. Nice and vague. Except he doesn’t let it be. Look at these lines:

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with the little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

 Look at the specificity of what King wants and dreams–his goal.  Yes, he uses words like freedom and oppression, but he makes you see the concrete meaning of those dreams in his imagery of the governor, of his own four children, of those red hills of Georgia. You see the tangible, reach-out-and-touch solidity of what this man wants. You see things you could create serious plot points around, and from which he drove his own actions and the actions of millions of other people.

Because they knew what he wanted.

I have the dream part of my MC’s character. I’m still working on those concrete details, those specific things she is driven to go after. So today, with a BIG mug of tea and some good music, I’m asking her more questions. Today and tomorrow, I’ve slotted out for this. I know I won’t get all the way there. I know I’ll still, by Friday, be left with a lot of questions. But they’re getting me closer–they’re showing me what’s missing and will, hopefully, sit in my brain as I go back to writing scenes–pushing me toward something solid.

How do you get to the tangible objects, events, moments your hero wants? How do you take her from that thematic goal to the concrete quest? Share any tips and tricks in the comments–we’ll all benefit!

Posted in First Drafts

Loosening the Reins

Posted on by beckylevine

We all know what Anne Lamott says… “The only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.”

Working on it, Anne!

But here’s the thing. She also says this:

The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go-but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.

This month, I’m finding myself thinking more and more about what Anne talks about here, and I’m reminding myself to loosen the reins on my writing. I don’t usually have much of a battle with my inner editor over prose, but about heading into a story without knowing pretty well where I’m headed, well, that’s where I get into conflict. Not with my editor, but with my muse. We frequently have words. It usually goes something like this.

MUSE: Just write. Be creative. It’ll come. I promise.

ME: Just write? Are you crazy? I have no idea what is supposed to happen in this scene, who my hero’s supposed to be in conflict with, what she WANTS, where she’s heading next.

MUSE: Just write. Be creative. You can answer those questions in the second draft. (And the third. And the fourth.)

ME: What if I can’t, even then? What if it never comes together?

MUSE: Just write. Be…

You get the picture. She can be annoyingly repetitive.

Here’s the thing. What Anne is talking about above is trust–in the muse, or in the process, or in the skills you have been developing over the years. Logically, rationally, I believe in all these things. I believe it will come, and I will see the patterns, and I will get them on the page. But emotionally…yeah. Trust.

Mostly, I have that, too. It takes me a day or so of scrabbling around on the page, with each new scene, trying to force things into place before I’m ready, but then I whack myself upside the head and say… “Shitty, Becky. Anne said, ‘shitty.'” And the only way to even get shitty on the page is to actually write.

WARNING: HORSE METAPHOR

I’ve ridden a few times. I am not a horse person, although I did my share of galloping around the playground when I was a little girl. I had friends with REAL horses, and you know–they’re VERY tall and VERY fast. When I’m on a real horse, I’m all about pretending I do have control, about holding those reins still and not moving a leg until I’m totally ready to send that animal a signal. And then I’m all about hanging onto the pommel and doing my best to let that horse know I’m perfectly happy at a walk. No trot needed, and we seriously don’t need to gallop.

When I write, I remind myself to loosen up on those reins and give the horse its head.  I might fall off (but, honestly, THAT’S not going to hurt as much as the real thing, thank you very much!), and I’m sure to give the horse a few misleading cues, but mostly that horse is going to amble along, letting me lurch back and forth on its sun-warmed back, and it’s going to take me along a few different, maybe confusing trails. If I’m lucky, it’s going to toss its head and run a little crazy.

Horse football

At some point, though, that horse is going to smell the barn. Or the stable. Or the paddock. (WhatEVER!). And it’s going to head home and take me with it. And I’ll know more about the places that we’ve been together than I could have ever imagined when I put my foot into the stirrup and pulled myself up into the saddle.

And that’s when I’ll start over, pulling all the shit together into something better. That’s what I trust in. That it will happen, even if I can’t see it today.

Right? Of course right!

Posted in Character, First Drafts

First Draft: Peopling the World or Who ARE These Characters?

Posted on by beckylevine

WARNING: You’ll be getting a lot of posts about first drafts in the next few months. But don’t worry, those revision posts will be coming along after that!

My friend Jana McBurney-Lin talks about a character in her book My Half of the Sky who came out of nowhere. I think, if I remember right, it’s the woman who tells fortunes in the park and who becomes a central part of the main character, Li Hui’s, life. Jana talks about how this woman started out as a small, secondary character and then grew–of her own accord, pretty much–into someone critical to the story and to Li Hui’s character arc.

Yesterday, as I wrote, four new characters stepped into my story’s pages. Without even so much of an “Excuse me.” The words kept flowing from and around them, so I was kind of like, what the… as I typed their dialogue and actions. I didn’t argue with them, I didn’t try to push them away, I just sort of let them tell me what they were doing there and what they wanted to say.

Jacob, Goldie, Sonia, and Mary, where the heck did you come from? (I’m having a lot of fun naming my secondary characters after some of the gazillion great-aunts and great-uncles I had, some of whom I knew, some of whom I never met, but who definitely seem to have been given the right names for this era!)

Okay, it wasn’t quite all that muse-driven. I did stop typing. I did look at these characters for a minute and try to figure out where and how they fit into the story I had already plotted without them. I thought about the fact that these people might not stay in the book (I mean, I already have two love-interests planned for Caro; what in the world is she doing flirting with this new guy?), and I thought about how these characters might take my story in directions I haven’t foreseen. And I realized that, at this point, either of those factors could turn into a bad or a good thing.

Now is not the time to make that decision.

Now is the time when there do need to be more people in my MC’s life, more people who are just part of who she is, part of the world through which she moves on a daily basis. The scenes I was writing yesterday mostly take place at Caro’s school (let’s not even get started on how little I know about public schools in 1913 yet!), and that school will be a big part of the choices she makes along her path. There have to be students in that school, and there have to be friends and acquaintances and apparently at least one boy with whom she has an ongoing competition to be the best math student. (???!!)

So for now, these folk stay. It’ll hurt, I know, to get rid of any of them, because they came into my brain and into the scenes, if not fully-fledged, with habits and personality traits that I’m already hooked on.  And it’ll be tricky, challenging, even frustrating to build them into something stronger than they are now, if they do need to stay, if they convince me they truly have a role in this story.

But it’s the first draft. It’s the time to scatter ideas and characters onto the page and see where they fall and what they want to do. Yes, I question them. Yes, I stop for a minute to really look at them and ask them, “What are you doing here?” Hello, I’m Becky, and I’m a control freak. I’m getting better, though, at letting go, at keeping my mind open and trusting that these people have something to tell me, something to add to the story.

Of course, if they’re fibbing, I can always—ouch!—bring out that red pen and kill off a few darlings. 😦

Posted in First Drafts, Young-Adult

Thinking Out Loud: The Feeling of Age in Young-Adult Writing

Posted on by beckylevine

As you know if you read Sunday’s post, I’m getting started on a new scene in my YA WIP this week. I’ve got some basics down for scene structure and plot and character goals, and I’m getting the words on the page. Something else, though, is happening at the same time.

Sometimes, when you’ve stepped away from a project for a while, there are pieces or aspects of it you can see more clearly. I hadn’t realized that was going on with Caro’s story until I started brain-dumping today and finding ideas coming quickly, but still…not being quite satisfied.

It’s the age thing. The teenager. The young-adult. I’m so not there yet.

DISCLAIMER: I know that’s okay. I know I don’t have to be there yet. It’s only the first draft. I have time. I have musing and mulling hours. I can let it come, as it comes.

Still, I’m thinking.

It’s a subtle difference between upper middle-grade and young-adult, but it’s an important one. Factor in that I’m writing a historical YA, and you’ve got another layer of…something else. Honestly, I’m not sure if I will ever choose to write a modern YA (not that I don’t have ideas), because–in some ways–that world still feels so alien to me, about as alien as it did when I was one. A YA. If I ever really was. Which, I know, says I have something to write about, but..well, it’s not here yet.

Back to the historical. I know that this book needs to be young-adult. There are all sorts of reasons—from historical accuracies to the darkness of some things my MC will be dealing with. Yes, there have been wonderful MG books written about horrible times in history, and done brilliantly, but–for this book–that doesn’t feel right for me. Mostly, I think, it needs to be young-adult because of the choice I believe Caro has to make at the end of the story.

Bleak. Alone. Strong.

Caro is pretty much telling me that she has to be this old, this close to as much independence as a woman had in 1913, with the strength and power and rights to make this ending choice. I’m not fighting her.

But…as I write, I haven’t given her what she wants yet. Yes, my MC is the right age, numerically. Yes, she’s living in her world as a teen of that era would have done. Yes, there’s a young man. What’s not there? I’m not sure.

Some possibilities…

  • An incredibly strong sense of herself, a feeling that she is on the cusp of something new and different than what she’s been living?
  • A sense of separation from others, from her family, at the core of how she looks at the world?
  • A need for independence that gets rope burn from the restrictions placed upon it?
  • A feeling that there is more to see, to get to, than she’s experiencing at the moment?
  • A tension in her muscles, a readiness for something she hasn’t yet defined?
  • A feeling of power, unused as yet?

It’s a voice, a core element that I’m still reaching for. There’s a seriousness to Caro’s story that she needs to recognize, through which she needs to move, make choices, and fight. There’s an adultness to her young-adult character that I need to find.

Luckily, I’ve still got some time. 🙂

Have you written young-adult and “younger” books? What do you do when you’re shifting gears from one to the other? Is it about the character, who they are and what they’re after? Or is there a place you push yourself to, to examine more closely, to make the leap?

Posted in First Drafts

1st Draft: Digging Back In

Posted on by beckylevine

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from my YA WIP. It’s been a couple of weeks of spring break vacation, developing and delivering talks, doing some work for a client, getting through a couple of big research books, getting to the next step on my picture book, and I can’t actually remember what else. Although I’m sure there’s more. 🙂

Anyway, the decks are cleared for at least a week, and this week I AM WRITING. (If I could figure out how to do a bigger font in WordPress, you’d really hear me shouting that one.)

Yes, I am writing. Even though, in the perfect scheme of things, I’m not actually ready.

When we last tuned in to the Bat Channel, Batman and Robin were hanging from a beam over a pot of bubbling….

Oops. When I last tuned in to my story, I was not happy with it. The scene I finished up and sent off to my critique group was drifty and unfocused, the MC was NOT on any strong path–forward or backward, and nobody was doing anything I wanted them to do. Probably because I didn’t know what they should be doing.

Well, let me tell you. Coming back to a story that I’ve left in this state, especially after a number of days away, I could totally spend a week in recovery. You know, thinking and thinking and thinking about where I am in the book, rather than storing the questions on the KEEP THINKING shelf in my brain, and writing forward.

I’m staying away from recovery this week. Part of this decision comes from the fact that in a couple of weeks, things get busy all over again, and I want to make some progress NOW. Part of it comes from the fact that I truly believe that getting a first draft OUT will teach me more about my character, about my plot, than going back will…at least right now. But the big part of it is that…I MISS WRITING.

(I apologize for all the capital letters. I seem to be channeling Dorothy Sayers’ Miss Climpson today.)

And so I am going to write. I’m even jumping back in at a point where I should really do more research, since I’m writing the first scene in the book that takes place in a public school in 1913 Chicago, and I seriously don’t have a grasp of that world yet. My mantra for the week? “This can wait.” (See, no more all caps!) I’m going to stick her in a desk and surround her with girls and a teacher, and I’m going to concentrate on goal + obstacle = tension, and I’m going to PRODUCE WORDS. (Oops!)

What do you do when you’ve had to take a break? Do you step back in slowly, or do you throw yourself into the whirlpool, let yourself get sucked under, and see where you end up?

Have a wonderful writing week!

Posted in Critique Groups, First Drafts, Uncategorized

Thankful Thursday: Another One for the Critique Group

Posted on by beckylevine

I’ve been writing an icky scene.

No, not one with blood and guts (wait, maybe that’s what it needs!). One where the writing was just dragging along, not flowing, where I was staring at it and knowing that–even for a first draft–it was not making me happy.  In other words, the staring wasn’t helping. And next week is slotted (in my mental writing calendar) for a bit of work on my picture book and a bit more work on some talks I’m getting ready to give. So, you know, it would have been easy just to stall out on this scene, let it sit on the computer, and then–yes–have it be that much harder to face when I came back to it.
Or…  I could push through it, with the unhappiness, get it “done,” and send it out to my critique group, knowing that it’s totally safe to share with them and knowing that I’ll get ideas, thoughts, suggestions…HELP!

And then I got an email from my mom who, as I’ve mentioned here before, is pretty darned wise. She’s been working on her memoir, first through a class at the local community college and then–when funding got cancelled for the class (BOO, HISS!), with the group of people who decided to keep writing together. I’d just given her a basic critique, with a few thoughts about scene structure and showing, not telling, and I know she’d planned to get right back to writing. Turns out, not quite so fast–she’s not only a wise woman, but a very busy one. Anyway, turns out  is the meeting of her group. Here’s what Mom said in her email:

          We’re meeting this afternoon, so I HAD to get something written. 

Ha!

Yes, that is the motivation magic of a critique group. It’s the kind of deadline that, in a strong & supportive group, puts just the right amount of pressure on us–the good kind. The kind that says we’re free to get past the reluctance, distaste, or fear about whatever that current writing piece is–to push through it, get it to some kind of “done,” and send it out.

Free to keep moving forward.

Posted in First Drafts

Laying Down the Bones

Posted on by beckylevine

I’ve written two scenes so far in this restart of my WIP. Fifteen pages. So far, it’s got all the wonderful qualities listed in this trailer for Miracle on 34th Street:

Yeah, right. I don’t think so. More like the exact opposite.

And you know what? I don’t care. I’m getting the basics down. The characters and settings are on stage. The two scenes have conflicts, and very possibly the right conflicts. I’m getting the tiny seeds of who these characters, or will be, out of my head and into some words. I’m sticking in placeholders for specific details that I’ll need to research.

I’m writing the bones. No, the bones aren’t exciting yet. In fact, they’re pretty darned bland. But they’re on the page, linking the skeleton I need, so that I can add the muscles and blood and skin later on.

And that feels great.

Not to mention I finally figured out how to embed a YouTube video in my blog!

Posted in First Drafts

Remembering What I Love about Writing

Posted on by beckylevine

This week, I broke a rule. A rule I have told other writers, loud and often, not to break.

I started over.

I spent some time in the fall putting words on pages. I went back and forth between writing scenes and reading research books. I got close to a hundred pages written. They weren’t bad. They probably qualified as the stuff that Anne Lamott says we need to get out of us, before we can revise. There was one problem.

I wasn’t happy.

Note I didn’t say that I wasn’t happy with the pages. I just wasn’t happy. I wasn’t enjoying any of the process. Oh, I’d write a few paragraphs in a voice that was fun, or I’d describe a bit of setting that looked pretty good. But I wasn’t being pulled back to write more, and I wasn’t looking forward to spending time with my MC. Who, frankly, is a pretty awesome person.

So I backed up. I spent November and December plotting the order of scenes, getting a much better idea of things that can happen in the middle, and starting to see a glimpse of how my two history threads (that DO intersect in reality) might intersect in my MC’s life. I spent time with each of my characters, trying to discover each of their goals, and I got closer. By the end of the year, I felt like I had a much stronger sense of the story.

And it had very little to do with what I’d written.

So I started over. Chapter 1, Scene 1, Page 1.

I’m slowing myself down, putting down some basic points for each scene before I start writing. Letting myself pause and think as I write, keeping in mind those character goals I thought about last month. I’m pushing myself to keep the dramatic action/conflict coming, even when I know I’ll have to amp it up later. Honestly, if you took the 100 pages I wrote this fall and compared them to the 100 pages I’m going to write in the next couple of months, I’m guessing they wouldn’t look that different. The characters and actions would probably look the same, and it’s probable that the new 100 pages won’t be any better, not from the outside.

But guess what? I’m happy again. The love is back, the feeling that this writing is THE thing I want to do with my life, no matter where it takes me on the “success” path. And I know that this is a story I want to tell.

Now I’m not planning on breaking this rule again. I still believe that too much time playing with words and phrasing at this point, in a first draft, can be a disasterous form of procrastination. But…as I get older, I’m learn (I hope!) some flexibility. I’m learning to listen more to myself, to my mind and my gut, and to take a few more chances that they might be right.

So, here and now, I give you permission to break a rule. Okay, let’s not make it one that lands you in prison with no writing time, but look for a little one that’s been bugging you. What have you heard in the past year about how to write, how not to write, that just isn’t working for you? What do you want to try instead–even if only for a few days, to check it out? Go for it…I’d love to see what happens!

Posted in Book in a Week, First Drafts, NaNoWriMo, Revising

Let’s Talk about 1st Drafts: A (Hopefully) Gentle Post-Nano Pep Talk

Posted on by beckylevine

A week or so ago, I blogged about progress–thinking about what people would be feeling as they came to the end of NaNo. Now that NaNo is over & authors everywhere are actually looking over what they did produce in November, I’m feeling the need to talk about things a little bit more. Actually, this post is prompted in part by the disappointment an online friend was (hopefully, not is, anymore) feeling about her 1st draft. So this may turn into a bit of a rant.

Qualifier: I very much like the idea of NaNo. I did a variant in Book in a Week a few years ago, and I was thrilled with the results–with where that week got me, in terms of understanding my story and in terms of having actual material to move forward with.

Note that I did not say I was thrilled with the draft.

That first draft was–well, let’s just call it an Anne Lamott-approved 1st draft. I sat down to read it after the week, and started scribbling notes and thoughts, and then I stopped reading. Because it was just that bad.

I did not stop revising. By maybe 1/3 of the way through, I’d seen that my hero was being a totally passive observer, letting his sidekick drive the choices and actions of the story. I didn’t have to read the whole manuscript to find out whether he continued that way; I knew he did. And I knew that, before I could do any other revising, I had to tackle this major problem.

So I wrote a second draft, in which I pushed that hero to the front. I made the story goals his goals, and I threw the obstacles in his path. Did I work on other, smaller issues as I went through all the chapters? Of course, I did–I’m human! But that was the revision focus. And when I finished that draft, I had something I thought I could work with. Something I thought I could pass through my critique group without too much humiliation and embarrassment.

What’s my point? That first draft–whether you wrote it in a week or a month–is supposed to be bad. REALLY bad. How could it be otherwise? Unless you have the brain of, I don’t know…Stephen Hawking? Albert Einstein? William Shakespeare? ______________ ? (Fill in the blank with the name of any famous author you’ve heard say they DO write a beautiful first draft!), you cannot write a manuscript that fast and THINK about it at the same time. Yes, I know, you did think. So did I during the Book in a Week process. But I thought for seconds and minutes. I did not think for hours, because I had none of those to spare. And neither did you.

What do you have, from your NaNo work? Do you have crap? If you answer anywhere near “Yes,” I want you to step away from the computer, give yourself a hug and some chocolate, and do the happy dance. Because you’re supposed to have crap. And you got it in a month–many of us take a YEAR (or more) to reach that point! You get to start turning that horrible stuff into something better 11 months ahead of schedule. Are you on Twitter? Did you see all the tweets from agents and editors, in varying degrees of tact, asking you NOT to query them about this manuscript on December 1st? The fact that you recognize how bad your first draft is proves you have the skill level and the knowledge of the craft to see that.

Okay, rant finished. But seriously, if you’re feeling disappointed or discouraged or–please, no–like you’ve failed in any way, well, just don’t!  Is there something you particularly hate about the story so far? Wonderful! Take that element and fix it. Figure out what you hate about it, why it makes you want to take the whole manuscript and use it to heat the wood-burning stove this winter, and revise around that problem. Save the AL-approved 1st draft, if you want to reassure yourself that you’re not losing any treasures (but really so you can show yourself how much BETTER that next draft is–and the next, and the next…).

I love NaNo and BIAW. I love the idea of tackling this big a project in such a short time, of riding an adrenalin wave, of producing more words and ideas than you ever thought possible. I browsed through NaNo’s website before writing this blog, and that’s really what the month is supposed to be about. I do not like all the bad feelings that come to some NaNo writers when the adrenalin leaves, and the crash comes. No matter how bad those words look on the page, you have achieved something wonderful.

Let yourself believe that.