Ok, I've worked a lot on my opening. I've gotten the prologue down to 4 pages. I introduced Ash in a way I think shows a good "before" portrait of him and his needs that will allow the "after" picture I'll soon write to stand in great relief. I aimed to write him as a good-hearted person who likes to please and who is quite vulnerable emotionally, needy. I show the holes in his marriage, but also end the most recently finished chapter on a note that shows a portrait of what their good times look like when they agree to look for a house. I introduced his wife Ginny in a way that I hope shows her as as someone searching for meaning in her life, something she had but lost. I'm almost to my first temptation for Ash. I've already written it, but I have a transition to make. A chapter that shows how they can go form that high point when they decide to look for a house, back down to low enough in Ash's confidence that he can be vulnerable to temptation, needing attention.
Driving today, I had a thought of bringing Miazy in in her POV. I hadn't planned on that til December, and it's still summer. But maybe it'd be good to bring her in. Maybe in that chapter I can make passing reference to her observation of an event between Ash and Ginny that the reader can know makes him lose confidence in Ginny. I think it'd be fun to find Maizy's older voice. I haven't written her yet, other than in the prologue. Maybe it'd be really good for the story to bring her in now, in Ash's "before" portrait.
Ok, I've decided: my task tonight is to write a Maizy chapter. I want her voice to be rich, to reveal observations of her world. She's the artist, after all--if anyone's got powers of observation it should be her. Also, I hope to show, eventually at least, that Maizy of the prologue was not a trustworthy POV. I want to show how strong she is now in comparison.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
On Reading a Certain Inspirational Fiction Author's Book
I just read a Christian novel by a certain author I will not name--but it was one I'd almost promised myself I'd never read. The only thing that kept me from making this vow official was that I was so uninterested in ever reading her books that there was no reason to make myself promise--it was such a given! But I took it on as homework, part of my research into the market, to see what her writing was really like. Recently at a conference, a writer insinuated lack of respect for this writer; she said she tried to read one of her novels once and threw it out the window of her car. I resonated with that, or at least my preconceptions resonated with that--I hadn't yet actually read any of her works. But this writer recognized there is one thing of value to those books--she is doing something right. She mentioned a survey that revealed that writer is so popular, selling a million copies every time she puts out a new book, because women say they like that she can make them cry.
So, at the library, finding everytihng I wanted unavailable, I three times walk by this very popular, can-make-women-cry novelist's books. But I finally succumb and pick one off the shelf. I further justified it by making the one I choose fulfill a double duty. My other homework is to read Christian novels that deal with adultery and see how they handle it, so I chose this author's book on that topic.
I read it in 2 days--a quick read. Yes, she did make me cry. And if that book is an indication of typical plot lines of others, I can say I'm not interested in reading more. I was frustrated by a number of things. One, the extremes of the plotline seemed to be a cop out. I read once that readers can forgive coincidences to get characters into trouble, but not to get out of trouble. I saw a certian character's death quite a cop out to the main character's biggest challenge, setting up the romance for future installments of the series.
Secondly, I was annoyed by some of the characterizations of the faithful. I can't articulate why yet. (My last post "Struggling with my characters' faith orientations" was about this.) But something about it just didn't sit right with me. And the writer didn't even have everyone in the book as a Christian. So it wasn't the problem that I expected--a whitewashed world where everyone agrees and follows Jesus, etc. It might take me a while to pinpoint what exactly strikes me as disingenuine about the write'rs portrayals of people of faith. A third annoyance is just the way characters were written. It wasn't bad, but then it also wasn't really good. I started reading Anne Brashares The Last Summer of You nad Me right after this book, and it made a sharp contrast. I love, LOVE the way Brashares characterizes people, and the way she gives them internal monologues that reveal how they see the world. I feel like I'm learning something about the world through their eyes. They are so rich. By comparison, this best -selling inspirational fiction writer was thin, shallow. But her subject matter was not. I liked a lot of the themes she was adressing, and even the way she handled them at times. But the writing jsut wasn't great. Or the plot structure.
Secondly, I was annoyed by some of the characterizations of the faithful. I can't articulate why yet. (My last post "Struggling with my characters' faith orientations" was about this.) But something about it just didn't sit right with me. And the writer didn't even have everyone in the book as a Christian. So it wasn't the problem that I expected--a whitewashed world where everyone agrees and follows Jesus, etc. It might take me a while to pinpoint what exactly strikes me as disingenuine about the write'rs portrayals of people of faith. A third annoyance is just the way characters were written. It wasn't bad, but then it also wasn't really good. I started reading Anne Brashares The Last Summer of You nad Me right after this book, and it made a sharp contrast. I love, LOVE the way Brashares characterizes people, and the way she gives them internal monologues that reveal how they see the world. I feel like I'm learning something about the world through their eyes. They are so rich. By comparison, this best -selling inspirational fiction writer was thin, shallow. But her subject matter was not. I liked a lot of the themes she was adressing, and even the way she handled them at times. But the writing jsut wasn't great. Or the plot structure.
When I hit writers' block, I write nonfiction articles. Heres' a smattering:
How Much Genetically Modified Food Do You Eat?
Green Tea Anti-Oxidants: How Do They Actually Fight Cancer?
Chemical in Some Disposable Diapers Cause of Obesity and Hormone Disruption
Struggling with the faith orientations of my characters
My brain feels like mush. I have the opportunity to write tonight, and yet I'm wasting time. If I'm not mentally prepared for exactly what I'm writing, before I write, I hardly get a thing accomplished. It takes so much mental discipline to write!
My mind has been wrestling through the religious orientations of my characters. I haven't made my decisions yet on what all their beliefs are. I realize now I need to know this, and I cannot know it by simply randomly picking for each person. I read a lot on personality theory (think Meyers-Briggs, Jungian theory, the old temperaments based on the humroal system, etc.) and I know that a person's orietnation toward religion and faith is infleunced by the same things that influience a personality toward everything else in life. I know enough to know my characters' faith orientations have to grow organically out of other characteristics I've given them. SO it's more like I need to discover their relgiious oreitnataions--born out of both thier family of origin, life experience and basic temperament. At a recent conference,T L Higley, writer of Christian historical fiction, made reference to a book that addresses the faith aspect specifically. I should probably try to find that. It'd be interesting for me to see what things are common roadblocks to faith for certain personality types.
My mind has been wrestling through the religious orientations of my characters. I haven't made my decisions yet on what all their beliefs are. I realize now I need to know this, and I cannot know it by simply randomly picking for each person. I read a lot on personality theory (think Meyers-Briggs, Jungian theory, the old temperaments based on the humroal system, etc.) and I know that a person's orietnation toward religion and faith is infleunced by the same things that influience a personality toward everything else in life. I know enough to know my characters' faith orientations have to grow organically out of other characteristics I've given them. SO it's more like I need to discover their relgiious oreitnataions--born out of both thier family of origin, life experience and basic temperament. At a recent conference,T L Higley, writer of Christian historical fiction, made reference to a book that addresses the faith aspect specifically. I should probably try to find that. It'd be interesting for me to see what things are common roadblocks to faith for certain personality types.
So this is supposed to be my warm up for wrting on my novel. What now? I don't think anything about faith has been mentioned yet in the first number of chapters, except for in the prologue when a character makes reference to a Bible story. I had one other reference, but it got taken out cuz I took out the whole scene that had contained it. In reading a Brashares novel today (mainstream, not Christian fiction), I was surprised when, maybe 5 chapters in, the subject of God and a character's deep faith is mentioned. I liked how it was done--not forced, mentioned when it needed to be for the story. (In another blog post, I compare this to a very popular inspirational fiction novelists whose handling of this DID NOT impress me! )
Ah, maybe I need to journal form the perspectives of some of my character to find out what they think about God and faith. I know it about the main characters already, but I need to know it about some minor characters, cuz it'll determien how they show frinedship nad support to the main charaters when they undergo their trials. But all this journaling takes time. Is there a shortcut, a few questions I can ask of my characters, that will faster lead me to discovering thier answers to that big question? Maybe, but i don't know it. I have to invent their life stories before I can know how they affect them!
So here's to writing for mayb a half hour tonight. Maybe I'll write about Ash and what guilt feels like to him.
My other hobby is writing nonfiction articles:
Prostate Cancer: Nutrients for Prevention and Defense
Doctor Finds Depression Caused By Nutrient Depletion
Manufacture Your Own Electricity in Your Backpack or Briefcase?
Negative Health Effects of Genetically Modified Foods
My other hobby is writing nonfiction articles:
Prostate Cancer: Nutrients for Prevention and Defense
Doctor Finds Depression Caused By Nutrient Depletion
Manufacture Your Own Electricity in Your Backpack or Briefcase?
Negative Health Effects of Genetically Modified Foods
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
when is part 1 of family secret revealed?
I'm trying to decide when Ash's sister tells him what she found: that he was obviously the product of an affair. I already wrote that conversation as a flashback. in the story, he should actually have known it since his college year, because his sister, Cami, gets in a fight with their mom and and brings that up. But Ash doesn't remember that until he finds himself facing the same temptation.
I thought to delete that and have Cami, in the present of the novel, converse with Ash, reminding him of that fight and the knowledge of his mother having an affair. But then the question becomes--is it more effective to the narrative to have that occur before or after Ash is in his situation? It definitely changes the impact. One way, it's foreshadowing--but it also should make Ash think twice, be less likely to succumb. His remembering after, when he's dealing with regret, makes more sense--that the memory comes to his mind only because he repeats the mistake.
So maybe I shouldn't get rid of my original concept--I should keep it as a flashback that comes, bidden when he is regrets his choice.
I thought to delete that and have Cami, in the present of the novel, converse with Ash, reminding him of that fight and the knowledge of his mother having an affair. But then the question becomes--is it more effective to the narrative to have that occur before or after Ash is in his situation? It definitely changes the impact. One way, it's foreshadowing--but it also should make Ash think twice, be less likely to succumb. His remembering after, when he's dealing with regret, makes more sense--that the memory comes to his mind only because he repeats the mistake.
So maybe I shouldn't get rid of my original concept--I should keep it as a flashback that comes, bidden when he is regrets his choice.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Feedback from 2 published novelists on my novel-in-progress
At a writers' conference I attended Saturday, I had appointments with two published, established fiction writers.
My biggest struggle right now is how to structure the telling of my story. I know enough to know it isn't just about the story, but how well and how I tell it. Multiple readers have told me my beginning isn't working. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too stubborn to not give up and do what everyone else says--just start with Asher, the focal character, at a crisis point in his adult life. But no, I've been hung up on this idea of a prologue, or otherwise beginning with the backstory of the scandal of his birth. My entire inception of the novel came from the moment of creating concern for the newborn. I wanted to make people concerned that he'd survive--or possibly worse, wonder what kind of a person he'd be if he did survive.
My first appointment was with novelist Joyce Magnin, and I asked her to read my opening--the first 3-ish pages. She told me I wasn't as bad off on structure as I thought, and she showed me how she wrote her first novel as a frame story too and showed me how and where I could make it more apparent that that was what I was doing. Of course, she said I had some other fiction techniques to master, but over-all, it was a really encouraging meeting.
Second, I met with T L Higley. I didn't plan on that appointment, so I had nothing prepared (and my print out of my novel's opening was already red-pen marked from Joyce). My mind was completely overwhelmed by all the fabulous teaching I got in the sessions, plus conversation with other writers, that by the time I sat with her, my brain felt like mush. Now, she had spent some of the lunch break talking with some other writers seated around me, and in the course of that conversation, I had talked a bit about my novel. She remembered that and simply asked me to keep talking. And that's what we did. I shared with her my big-picture vision of the novel, and unlike Joyce, she heard the whole plot as I planned to lay it out. Her advice was markedly different. She was concerned my long prologue (3-5,000) words of back story of Asher's mother might not be the best start--simply because if I hooked readers through her POV, they might feel cheated because they thought they were investing in her and would be disappointed to find out she's a minor, not th main, character. I can see this. I've been told my prologue was simply too long. But now I can see why it's too long, for reasons other than word count. Higley said it wasn't impossible for this to work, but that it was risky for a first time novelist. When I was younger, I might have argued, citing all the examples to the contrary I'd read--for instance, I recently read Toni Morrison's A Mercy, in which every chapter is told from the point of view of a different character. But I know I'm not Morrison.... I'm very aware I chose a very ambitious project in the first place, and I really need to get it together and work before I can afford to mess with convention too much.
I'm now trying to distill my prologue to merely a few pages, maybe even just 2. I want to share enough of the mother's story to bring about the concern for the baby's welfare, and then leave the rest of the back story to be pieced out through the course of the novel. My other challenge for the day is introducing Asher, as an adult, in a very strong way. This past year, I'd been set on introducing him through the POV of his wife Ginny, and now that I'm introducing him alone, without her, and through his POV, I have a new task at hand. I've written a few chapters form his POV, but none of them is as strong and definitive as it needs to be. I know I need a chapter that shows his strengths--we need to like him (or readers won't sympathize enough with future events). But it also needs to show where he's vulnerable and hints of the mystery of what happened to his mom and how he grew up. THAT is turning out to be quite a challenge. Also, I don't want the events to be extremely mundane--a lot of conflict is coming, so I need to introduce him in a bit of a lull in his life and yet write about something that makes a reader want to know more about him.
Another novelist I heard speak this weekend talked about rewriting her novels 7-8 times. That floored me. And yet now I can see this reality. I just didn't think that was normal. I thought it was a sign of how inexperienced I am as a novelist. Well, I need to get to it--I need to show Ash doing something mildly heroic in his opening scene, while showing his weaknesses too.
My biggest struggle right now is how to structure the telling of my story. I know enough to know it isn't just about the story, but how well and how I tell it. Multiple readers have told me my beginning isn't working. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too stubborn to not give up and do what everyone else says--just start with Asher, the focal character, at a crisis point in his adult life. But no, I've been hung up on this idea of a prologue, or otherwise beginning with the backstory of the scandal of his birth. My entire inception of the novel came from the moment of creating concern for the newborn. I wanted to make people concerned that he'd survive--or possibly worse, wonder what kind of a person he'd be if he did survive.
My first appointment was with novelist Joyce Magnin, and I asked her to read my opening--the first 3-ish pages. She told me I wasn't as bad off on structure as I thought, and she showed me how she wrote her first novel as a frame story too and showed me how and where I could make it more apparent that that was what I was doing. Of course, she said I had some other fiction techniques to master, but over-all, it was a really encouraging meeting.
Second, I met with T L Higley. I didn't plan on that appointment, so I had nothing prepared (and my print out of my novel's opening was already red-pen marked from Joyce). My mind was completely overwhelmed by all the fabulous teaching I got in the sessions, plus conversation with other writers, that by the time I sat with her, my brain felt like mush. Now, she had spent some of the lunch break talking with some other writers seated around me, and in the course of that conversation, I had talked a bit about my novel. She remembered that and simply asked me to keep talking. And that's what we did. I shared with her my big-picture vision of the novel, and unlike Joyce, she heard the whole plot as I planned to lay it out. Her advice was markedly different. She was concerned my long prologue (3-5,000) words of back story of Asher's mother might not be the best start--simply because if I hooked readers through her POV, they might feel cheated because they thought they were investing in her and would be disappointed to find out she's a minor, not th main, character. I can see this. I've been told my prologue was simply too long. But now I can see why it's too long, for reasons other than word count. Higley said it wasn't impossible for this to work, but that it was risky for a first time novelist. When I was younger, I might have argued, citing all the examples to the contrary I'd read--for instance, I recently read Toni Morrison's A Mercy, in which every chapter is told from the point of view of a different character. But I know I'm not Morrison.... I'm very aware I chose a very ambitious project in the first place, and I really need to get it together and work before I can afford to mess with convention too much.
I'm now trying to distill my prologue to merely a few pages, maybe even just 2. I want to share enough of the mother's story to bring about the concern for the baby's welfare, and then leave the rest of the back story to be pieced out through the course of the novel. My other challenge for the day is introducing Asher, as an adult, in a very strong way. This past year, I'd been set on introducing him through the POV of his wife Ginny, and now that I'm introducing him alone, without her, and through his POV, I have a new task at hand. I've written a few chapters form his POV, but none of them is as strong and definitive as it needs to be. I know I need a chapter that shows his strengths--we need to like him (or readers won't sympathize enough with future events). But it also needs to show where he's vulnerable and hints of the mystery of what happened to his mom and how he grew up. THAT is turning out to be quite a challenge. Also, I don't want the events to be extremely mundane--a lot of conflict is coming, so I need to introduce him in a bit of a lull in his life and yet write about something that makes a reader want to know more about him.
Another novelist I heard speak this weekend talked about rewriting her novels 7-8 times. That floored me. And yet now I can see this reality. I just didn't think that was normal. I thought it was a sign of how inexperienced I am as a novelist. Well, I need to get to it--I need to show Ash doing something mildly heroic in his opening scene, while showing his weaknesses too.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Write for the Market or JUST WRITE?
It's long been a question of mine whether I'm writing my present novel for the Christian fiction market or the mainstream fiction market. I vacillate on whether I care. Some months I say I'm just writing my story--I'll figure out what market it best appeals to later! Then other months, I realize certain ways of telling the story block me from one market or the other. (In fact, my big problem is that I've often felt I'm going to have a hard time in either market, no matter how well I write or the quality of my story craft. I'm writing about marriage and infidelity, so the sex lives of characters are certainly at the center of the story, even if sex scenes per se are not. On the other hand, the more I write, the more I realize my Christian worldview colors everything I write, so that even if I try to write a novel that's not overtly "Christian," a Christian viewpoint oozes out nonetheless. And I'm not upset about that--I am who I am, and proudly so. But it's put an added dimension on possible trouble getting published. Then in my wisest moments, I remind myself none of this really matters, in a sense, because if I'm writing what I'm meant to write--if my writing is flowing out of the purpose God created me for and He wants me to tell this story, He's going to direct it getting where He wants it to get.)
A fellow member of my local writer's group, Craig Alan Loewen, is presenting a workshop at a conference I'm attending Saturday at the Lancaster Christian Writer's Group. I looked over his handout, and I see he says not to write for the market--just write the story and the right market will open up. Ironically, anther strong voice in my head, saying the contrary, is from a book he gave me--Penelope Stokes' book about how to write for the Christian market (she advises expressly writing to fit the market).
Last night I was working on the first number of chapters to cement who Ash, my novel's main character, is, and I already feel a question about editing some stuff out, or at least moving some details to further into the book. Stokes talks about how readers of Christian fiction are in the more conservative end of the continuum, (which I read as 'more conservative than me'). When I think women in my novel critique group might be offended or uncomfortable with my revelation of Ash's past and present, I realize it's at least a possible litmus test for the Christian market. There are a lot of unknowns, and certainly the Christian fiction market has been evolving. But enough to handle this story?
I write this blog as a warm up to working on the chapters of my novel, and I was hoping to write to an answer, so I'd know if I should spend my writing time today revising my opening chapters to make them less forthright about Ash's dating life, possibly saving some details for later in the novel where those details may be easier to read. Or if I should just keep writing, changing nothing just now.
Maybe I really shouldn't worry about it now--but later. Maybe I won't really know what my novel can handle until more is written. Some part of me thinks maybe it never can be reconciled to meet the more stringent guidelines governing Christina fiction; I may be stuck in limbo between being too controversial for Christian fiction but too Christian for mainstream. And maybe that's just where it's meant to be. I sometimes worry that the story cannot even be told if i try to do it in the confines of Christian fiction--and yet I have connections and guidance to get into that publishing world--but none to try the much larger market of mainstream fiction.
I guess for now I'll just makes notes of how I could alter what I've written, if I ever saw that's what I wanted to do. But i'll leave them as they are for now, and just write the story!
PS At the conference I'm attending Saturday, I'm hoping to get an appointment with a fiction novelist there, and maybe that's what I'll talk with her about and see what her experience has been like... If I bring my opening of the book, about Ash's parents, she'd get the picture pretty quickly whether or not the entire book premise is just too much on the edge of what is being published right now. I'd seen that a book on adultery has been published in the market, but if I remember correctly, the woman found out upon her husband's death. I should probably read it as research. I wonder how that affects the story too--with the husband dead... My story isn't so much about the act of infidelity as the effects of it and whether or not the characters can handle reconciliation.
A fellow member of my local writer's group, Craig Alan Loewen, is presenting a workshop at a conference I'm attending Saturday at the Lancaster Christian Writer's Group. I looked over his handout, and I see he says not to write for the market--just write the story and the right market will open up. Ironically, anther strong voice in my head, saying the contrary, is from a book he gave me--Penelope Stokes' book about how to write for the Christian market (she advises expressly writing to fit the market).
Last night I was working on the first number of chapters to cement who Ash, my novel's main character, is, and I already feel a question about editing some stuff out, or at least moving some details to further into the book. Stokes talks about how readers of Christian fiction are in the more conservative end of the continuum, (which I read as 'more conservative than me'). When I think women in my novel critique group might be offended or uncomfortable with my revelation of Ash's past and present, I realize it's at least a possible litmus test for the Christian market. There are a lot of unknowns, and certainly the Christian fiction market has been evolving. But enough to handle this story?
I write this blog as a warm up to working on the chapters of my novel, and I was hoping to write to an answer, so I'd know if I should spend my writing time today revising my opening chapters to make them less forthright about Ash's dating life, possibly saving some details for later in the novel where those details may be easier to read. Or if I should just keep writing, changing nothing just now.
Maybe I really shouldn't worry about it now--but later. Maybe I won't really know what my novel can handle until more is written. Some part of me thinks maybe it never can be reconciled to meet the more stringent guidelines governing Christina fiction; I may be stuck in limbo between being too controversial for Christian fiction but too Christian for mainstream. And maybe that's just where it's meant to be. I sometimes worry that the story cannot even be told if i try to do it in the confines of Christian fiction--and yet I have connections and guidance to get into that publishing world--but none to try the much larger market of mainstream fiction.
I guess for now I'll just makes notes of how I could alter what I've written, if I ever saw that's what I wanted to do. But i'll leave them as they are for now, and just write the story!
PS At the conference I'm attending Saturday, I'm hoping to get an appointment with a fiction novelist there, and maybe that's what I'll talk with her about and see what her experience has been like... If I bring my opening of the book, about Ash's parents, she'd get the picture pretty quickly whether or not the entire book premise is just too much on the edge of what is being published right now. I'd seen that a book on adultery has been published in the market, but if I remember correctly, the woman found out upon her husband's death. I should probably read it as research. I wonder how that affects the story too--with the husband dead... My story isn't so much about the act of infidelity as the effects of it and whether or not the characters can handle reconciliation.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Novel Structure: The 3-Act Format?
I got some heavy critique from a fellow writer in my online novel critique group about my chapters that introduce the second generation of my characters: Ginny and Ash, a married couple. Some criticism was due to the reader forgetting previous characters' names and therefore misunderstanding new information on new characters as "inconsistencies." But all that irrelevant crit aside, a couple things this reader mentioned have been chewing at me.
Tonight I read a few articles in the Writer's Digest Write Your Novel in 30 Days publication. An article on the 3 act novel and story arc has really got me thinking--and in a direction I've sort of known might be a flaw in my plot construction. The 3-act structure, as defined in what I just read, means that the first act sets the stage, and the second act is about all the conflict, then the third is the resolution. Really, quite boring and uninspiring to me, at first. But I read some things that have made me ponder. Such as the writer's suggestion that while movies feature the inciting incident roughly a quarter into it, books need to do it a bit sooner, perhaps, a fifth of the way into it. I have read conflicting theories about what the inciting incident really is, and this article talked about how act II really begins when the character can no longer walk away and return to his old life. He argues that if a conflict in the beginning of your novel still leaves him able to go back to life the way it was, it's not the inciting incident. Hmmm...THAT got me thinking.
What is my protagonist's inciting incident? A worse question came to mind: Who is my protagonist? I've not wanted merely one. I want 4: 2 couples in different generations. The chapters just critiqued introduced the younger gneration through the eyes of Ginny, who, based on the amount of her point of view I've written, is the main character. But she isn't. She has to be slightly secondary to Ash, who is really the main character. I may have 4 people as leads, but Ash is the central figure, and Ginny hinges on Ash. So maybe some of the critique I've gotten about my recent chapters is rooted in the fact that Ginny does't have a classic inciting incident--because the plot is not revealing her to be the main protagonist.
The article also charted out the Hero's Journey, using Star Wars' Luke Skywalker as example. I've heard of this before and recognize I'm not writnig this kind of novel. Ginny dones't fit that . But then, I realized Ash sort of does...he is the main character, after all. I just have been reluctant to write many of his chapters yet because he's harder.
I think what I need to do is introduce the second genration with Ash's POV, giving a glimpse into his life, not Ginny's, first. I realize too that it means i need to go back in time, start the story at a point i'd planned not to write, just summarize in background info. But I see now that Ash's inciting incident is in that past I'd not wanted to write. Wow. this will be a challenge. I know I have to introduce him in scenes that makes us sympathetic to him, that let us see his vulnerability and make us like him, and then let us see the inciting incident when he "enters the dark side." I think I was trying to start with Ginny so we could see him through her point of view. Much of it was flattering to Ash, as Ginny extols a couple of his virtues. Starting with Ginny allowed me to keep Ash's secret. But I do now think I need to start with him...
Other pieces I've written:
Autism Rates Rise; University of Toledo Poises Itself to be Primary Resource for Deluge of Adults with Autism
Fast Food, Junk Food and Obesity Subsidized by Federal Government
The American Diet--Are We All Made of Corn?
Postpartum Depression, Psychological Distress Predicted by Previous Traumatic Birth
Tonight I read a few articles in the Writer's Digest Write Your Novel in 30 Days publication. An article on the 3 act novel and story arc has really got me thinking--and in a direction I've sort of known might be a flaw in my plot construction. The 3-act structure, as defined in what I just read, means that the first act sets the stage, and the second act is about all the conflict, then the third is the resolution. Really, quite boring and uninspiring to me, at first. But I read some things that have made me ponder. Such as the writer's suggestion that while movies feature the inciting incident roughly a quarter into it, books need to do it a bit sooner, perhaps, a fifth of the way into it. I have read conflicting theories about what the inciting incident really is, and this article talked about how act II really begins when the character can no longer walk away and return to his old life. He argues that if a conflict in the beginning of your novel still leaves him able to go back to life the way it was, it's not the inciting incident. Hmmm...THAT got me thinking.
What is my protagonist's inciting incident? A worse question came to mind: Who is my protagonist? I've not wanted merely one. I want 4: 2 couples in different generations. The chapters just critiqued introduced the younger gneration through the eyes of Ginny, who, based on the amount of her point of view I've written, is the main character. But she isn't. She has to be slightly secondary to Ash, who is really the main character. I may have 4 people as leads, but Ash is the central figure, and Ginny hinges on Ash. So maybe some of the critique I've gotten about my recent chapters is rooted in the fact that Ginny does't have a classic inciting incident--because the plot is not revealing her to be the main protagonist.
The article also charted out the Hero's Journey, using Star Wars' Luke Skywalker as example. I've heard of this before and recognize I'm not writnig this kind of novel. Ginny dones't fit that . But then, I realized Ash sort of does...he is the main character, after all. I just have been reluctant to write many of his chapters yet because he's harder.
I think what I need to do is introduce the second genration with Ash's POV, giving a glimpse into his life, not Ginny's, first. I realize too that it means i need to go back in time, start the story at a point i'd planned not to write, just summarize in background info. But I see now that Ash's inciting incident is in that past I'd not wanted to write. Wow. this will be a challenge. I know I have to introduce him in scenes that makes us sympathetic to him, that let us see his vulnerability and make us like him, and then let us see the inciting incident when he "enters the dark side." I think I was trying to start with Ginny so we could see him through her point of view. Much of it was flattering to Ash, as Ginny extols a couple of his virtues. Starting with Ginny allowed me to keep Ash's secret. But I do now think I need to start with him...
Other pieces I've written:
Autism Rates Rise; University of Toledo Poises Itself to be Primary Resource for Deluge of Adults with Autism
Fast Food, Junk Food and Obesity Subsidized by Federal Government
The American Diet--Are We All Made of Corn?
Postpartum Depression, Psychological Distress Predicted by Previous Traumatic Birth
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)