Thinking – Becky Levine

First Drafts, Getting Organized, Thinking

Friday Five: Finding My Way Back into My Story

Posted on 21 Aug 2009 by beckylevine

Today, with a gift of two free writing days (husband and son are off for an end-of-summer backpacking trip), I’m opening up my WIP and digging back in.

Feels wonderful.

Here’s what I’ll be doing:

1. Writing OUTSIDE the house. I’m heading over to the coffeehouse where I’ll be away from laundry and the kitchen cupboards that still need to be cleaned out and all the wonderful books I brought home from the library yesterday.

2. Spending some time thinking generationally. Ideas & thoughts about the mother-daughter pattern of my story—the fears engendered during one’s immigration and the resistance/frustration the other has about those fears—have been simmering the last couple of weeks. I’m pretty sure this is what I brought home from Chicago, both from the research part and from the hours spent with my sister on our family tree. Its brought those two threads together in my mind–not in any clear way yet, but as a weaving I need to focus on. I’m going to try and build a basic timeline of their lives and choices, making sure they also fit in the big historical events that need to be part of their stories.

3. Taking a look at Shutting Out the Sky, a book about tenements recommended to me by Stella Michel.

4. Browing through the chapters I have written. I’m in a much different mode now–realizing I was rushing through pages too quickly for the thinking I need to do on this story. I’m not going to go back and rewrite, but I’ll be taking along a pad of sticky notes to jot down possible changes to make, layers to add, on later drafts. I also just need to remind myself where I’m at and from which scene I need to start writing forward.

5. Let myself fall in love again. Between Chicago and getting life organized the last few weeks, I need to spend some time with Caro, remind myself why her story is so important to me and how I want to bring it onto the page. I’ll be doing a lot of jotting and doodling today and tomorrow, and I may stick a few pieces of paper up around my office to remind me of what I’m doing here, with this young woman.

What about you? What do you do to get back into the swing of the story, after the two of you have been separated for a while?

Plot, Scenes, The Middle, Thinking

Plotting the Middle–One Attempt to Find a System

Posted on 30 Mar 200930 Mar 2009 by beckylevine

I don’t know about you, but my brain does strange things in the early stages of thinking about a novel. Many of those things are strange in a good way. Others, not so much.

Lately, as I spend time with my current WIP, I’ll be immersed in some wonderful, creative brainstorming about my hero or another character or a setting, and my mind starts going off in tangents about scenes that need to happen or about the big, dramatic choices my hero will have to make by the end. Fun things like that. And then, all of a sudden, I’ll have one of two thoughts. They are:

I have WAY too many actions/events that have to happen in the middle of this story!
How in the WORLD am I going to find enough actions/events to fill up the middle of this story?!

Note: Exclamation points denote panic.

Double Note: Yes, I realize those thoughts are extreme opposites. Donald Maass would love me as a character.

The point, today, is that I did spend a little time the other day thinking, again, about how to plot out that middle. How to find a way to place it–as a craft element–somewhere between a dense, overcrowded mess and a gapingly empty maw. And here’s what I came up with.

I’m getting a pretty good idea of what both the beginning and the ending of this story need to be doing. As I work, my brain goes back and forth between those two points, thinking about how they connect and what layers they share. And I’m making myself slow down a bit and think about ways to weave those threads through the middle.

Here’s an example. Let’s say I’m writing a story about a tortoise and a rabbit. No, let’s call that second character a hare. The hare challenges the tortoise to a—okay, you know the story. You’re probably thinking it’s a pretty simple plot (which makes for a good example!), but there are a few layers here. We need to show the hare’s speed, and its cockiness, and its lack of manners. We need to show the tortoise’s slowness, its confidence, and its style.

Let’s take one set–speed and slowness.

In the Beginning, speed is strength and slowness is weakness. By the End, the tortoise has reversed that valuation–slowness can be power and strength may not be so good over the long haul. (Sounds like an ode to my running, but let’s not go there.) Obviously we can’t just snap our fingers and have that change happen–that’s wishful thinking, not storytelling.

We need two or three plot points in the Middle to make the change happen. And this is where I’m taking a few minutes, to ask myself, “What could those plot points be?” And for each thread I think about, I’m making a quick list of possiblities…like this:

The hare could laugh at the tortoise and all the other animals for being slow.
The tortoise could stop in the middle of the race to help a young animal that is hurt or lost.
The other animals could have a meeting and decide to help the tortoise.
The elephant could fill up its trunk with water from a nearby lake, then flood the path so the tortoise could swim the race.
The bees could magically polinate a nearby field of poppies into bloom, so the hare would fall asleep–oh, wait, that’s another story.

Anyway, you see the point. Each of these possibilities could (I’m not necessarily saying should!) be a scene in the story. In sequence, they show the progression from the hare being the one with power, to the tortoise earning the strength and support of friends and turning the tables on his long-eared antagonist. Et voila, some of your middle is filled.

What do you think? Is this a possible tool to help make that middle less scary, less intimidating? Do you have techniques you use to plot your way across the void? I’d love to hear them, because–whatever may or may not work–I’m pretty sure I’ll be trying them all in the next few months!

Thinking

Thinking Time

Posted on 26 Mar 200926 Mar 2009 by beckylevine

For the WIP I’m “writing” these days, I’m following a different path than I’m used to. And this new path involves an awful lot of non-writing. Also called thinking.

poohthink2

My husband, just this morning says that 90% of writing is actually thinking. Now granted, he’s a design engineer, but he does do a lot of creating in his work, and he has modified BIC (Butt in Chair) to BICFODSASWC (Butt in Chair, Feet on Desk, Staring at Screen, with Coffee).

For me, it’s tea, and I don’t do so well staring at the screen, but it’s the same theme.

For previous projects, I definitely did a lot of thinking, and much of that was ahead of time, but it was also with my hands on the keyboard, fitting things into the plot I was growing and the characters I was developing. Not so much, this time around.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m going through Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. It has become my thinking tool. Donald asks me questions, and I start looking for the answers. Now I could grab those answers out of my brain, scribble them down quickly, and move onto the next. You know, like this was one of those horrid, timed finals from college, where you had to come across as clever as possible in as short a time as you could manage (legibly!).

But that’s not what I’m doing. Instead, I’m dropping Donald’s questions into my brain (and my story) and seeing where they lead me. And they’re leading me in all sorts of direction. I have gotten a surprise the last three days I’ve done this work–a surprise that I’m pretty sure deepens and strengthens the story.

Do I have much idea of where all these layers will go–what the scene sequence needs to be, or what the cause-and-effect connections are? Not yet, although a sense of this is simmering along with all the other details. But–and here’s what I think is important–I am getting to KNOW this story, the people in it, SO much better than I ever have before. And I’m thinking (hoping) that this knowledge will have to pay off, when the writing starts.

Is all this magic because of the workbook? Well, a lot is, I think. The other part comes from me being ready for what Maass is talking about. And from using the part of the writing craft I already know, to go beyond what the worksheets ask me to do.

We tell ourselves that every hour, day, year that we put into this writing this makes us better writers, raises our skill level, but sometimes I think we don’t really believe it. We want to get “there” so badly that we are impatient with the time–and practice–that “there” requires of us.

I’m still impatient. I still want “there.” For now, though, I’m enjoying the path, the sparks that are flying between what I’ve already learned and I’m learning now. This is magic.