This is awesome advice! Occasionally I put character backstory into a different file. I might use it, I might not, but at least I let it out of my head and it often helps a great deal. 🙂
Characters
The Characters Within A Book
“The characters within a book were, from a certain point of view, identical on some fundamental level ‒ there weren’t any images of them, no physical tangibility whatsoever. They were pictures in the reader’s head, constructs of imagination and ideas, given shape by the writer’s work and skill and the reader’s imagination. Parents, of a sort.” ―Jim Butcher
If you haven’t read any of Jim’s books, start with STORM FRONT.
Editing & Earl Grey
Good writers know when their story is finished. We don’t question it; we just instinctively know “This is where to stop.” and often times, we’re satisfied with that. What do you do when your story is still being told and you’re magnetically pulled to keep on writing?
I’m ass deep in alligators on this rewrite. Like an onion, this story has so many deeper layers I have yet to unravel. Today, interesting things were developed. I then saved the file and decided to do a read-through. I cut, I added, I cut some more, and then additional development began. All I could do was type, because in that moment I thought “These poor characters. They’re so desperately trying to know who they are, what their role is in each other’s lives, how to stay focused, how to move forward.”, etc. It was kind of heartbreaking for me.
Initially when these characters popped into my head, I thought this would be an easy write and a very easy read; the kind that is easy to relate to. But then I realized I’d fallen into a trap of creating a character that made a choice out of avoidance. She spent the majority of the story avoiding huge issues when she didn’t need to do any of it.
At the time, a key line from her was “I stopped thinking up ways to tell him.” She was so committed to moving forward and being a strong woman, that she made a grave mistake, and would later realize how painful that mistake would be for her. She spent a lot of time arguing with a doctor, as well, one who was trying to help her, but was bound by patient confidentiality.
I allowed that to play out until the novel reached a crucial point. I loved what I’d written, but I also thought “What if I went in a different direction?” And so, I started from scratch with just a few key chapters to work with.
This current rewrite is the new direction. I don’t know if it’s better or worse, I just know that the storytelling is fair. It’s over 520 pages, and it continues to grow. I know I need to focus less on the page and word count, and focus more on the actual story, but as a writer of substance, I am trying to keep all of it in mind because I’ve already edited out about 200 pages, if not more. And here’s a simple fact; this story will eventually be whittled down to the bare minimum. That’s a given in the story-telling process. You want a clean manuscript, but you also want all of the key points in the final product.
So I sit here with a steaming cup of Earl Grey, with real sugar and cream, and I ponder my direction.
In many ways, this story is parallel to something I am currently going through. It’s a “Do I or don’t I?” story. Do I take this chance? Do I take this risk? What if? There are only three things lacking for me in my decision-making process, because after all, fiction is fiction and it gives you the opportunity to play. Believe me, I wish I had the problems these characters have. I have some of them, just not all of them.
I’ve decided to prepare this manuscript for a few contests coming up. I want to challenge myself and allow it to be read by people who can’t offend me. I’m my own worst critic; so the worst a stranger can say is nowhere near as harsh as I am with myself. It’s simple; you’ll either like it or you won’t. Hell, someone might even love it.
I didn’t really consider the ramifications of taking on a genre that is so well-established and timeless. I just wanted to write something out of my system so I’d stop having dreams about it every night. The dreams have stopped, but the story has not.
I will know when the story is done. I will. For now, I just have to keep writing. I’m either really angry or trying to get shit done when I break out the red mug. The grey mug is so much more soothing, but tonight, it’s red.
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
copyright © 2017 by Lisa Marino & Blackbird Serenity, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
“Who Are You?”
A few days ago a family member offered to read my new manuscript. It was a very “Alice In Wonderland” moment. I damn near said “Whooo Are YOU?” and everything, just like the caterpillar asks Alice. I turned my face to the right, in utter mortification.
“I can be objective.” was their argument. Um, I’d rather you not be.
Then they asked “Don’t you have anyone you trust who you would want to read it and give you their honest opinion?” I said no. I wasn’t kidding. “How about your best friend?” My best friend Marion is not a big reader, mostly because she reads at work all week long and can’t stand it when she’s on her own time, which is completely understandable. I could write the worst crap and she’d tell me it was fantastic. Not that I’ve EVER written crap in the 20+ years she & I have been friends, but you get my drift. Bestie #2 suffers from Fibromyalgia with terrible brain fog, so asking her to read 100,000 words, or more, would be akin to asking her to lift a crate of dynamite over her head while setting a match to it.
I then had my writer’s moment of realizing I have no Beta Readers. None whatsoever. And in truth? I don’t really trust anyone with my work. As if it’s been a well-kept secret; I’m a fucking control freak. However, experience has taught me to not only protect my work fiercely, but NEVER to hand it over to someone I haven’t thoroughly vetted.
A friend isn’t always the right person to ask. If they don’t want to hurt your feelings, they’re not going to be 100% honest. As the person “most likely to be intimidating”, I don’t think a single friend of mine would say boo to me when it comes to my work. A few would be honored to read it, and others? Not so much. It’s putting pressure on someone. Plus, most people who aren’t writers themselves can’t point out issues. As an editor, I can point out issues in every single thing I look at that is written, from a restaurant menu to a real estate flyer. I self-correct as people speak; I’m THAT bad.
I don’t worry that what I’ve written isn’t good. I know it is. However, it’s not finished. Until you know the story is done, why would you say “Here, can you read this unfinished manuscript?” Seriously?!
Yesterday I hit 91,000 words on the umpteenth rewrite. The decision to either make this story a one-shot deal (which is what I originally intended) or to turn it into 2-3 books, is an ever-present issue. The longer it gets, the more you have to realize it has branch-out potential. The characters are strong, interesting, and I’d hate to lose them. They’re lighter than what I normally write. Freer. More enjoyable because they’re easier to tap into. It’s a lot like knowing your hands, or your own heart. These characters are pieces of me in a very different way, and I am protective of them.
One day, I will have to let them fly out into the world and be judged. That day is NOT today, in their current state. They need time to blossom and flourish, and that’s normal. I refuse to feel pressured to complete something when I know in my bones that it’s not done. While I was able to get past that feeling of being stuck around page twenty-five, I no longer feel that way any more. I do, however, feel like the story needs a break from me looking at it fifty times a day. Progress does not occur when you psychoanalyze and criticize your own body of work for ten hours, or more, each day. That’s not productive.
So instead of staying up until 3:30 in the morning writing, which I’ve been doing for weeks and weeks, I went to bed early last night and actually got under six hours of sleep (which is the new norm post-Spring Forward). If I hadn’t hurt a toe in my sleep (No, I have NO idea how I did it. I just know it hurts and I had to take care of it immediately.) and been searching for the Neosporin, thus letting Kitten know that Mommy is awake because I was rummaging around in the dark, I might still be asleep. Instead, her Majesty thinks it’s breakfast time. It’s not. I went into the kitchen and food bowls are still filled, water bowl is good, and breakfast isn’t until about 8:30 a.m. If she keeps being aggressive, I may have to feed them earlier, but this usually results in the death stare at 3:00 in the afternoon while I’m trying to work. Once you’ve got two sets of eyes on you, it’s harder to say “You have another hour before you’re getting fed.” They’re not being starved. I actually just switched them over to a new grain-free food this weekend. I do think she wants attention because the rain is coming down hard and it makes her nervous, but mostly, I know my cat. She’s all about the food. LOL.
Today I feel like I can look at the manuscript with fresher eyes. I can get the Lexicon prepared for the beginning of the book and maybe do a few other things that until recently, I just haven’t had the head for.
The freedom of working with personal deadlines, instead of rigid ones, it that I’m answering to myself. I’ve already achieved a LOT by writing this multiple times, and writing three different alternatives to the beginning of the story. I’m not patting myself on the back, but I’m not sitting here in shame, either.
If the average reader understood how long it takes for a quality book to be written, edited, and published, they’d be shocked. An author friend of mine, who is currently dealing with copyright infringement lawsuit (someone stole her work and didn’t credit her for it), is paid fifty cents (U.S.) for every book sold. She’s a very interesting writer, spiritual, thought-provoking, and her take-home is fifty cents per book. Years worth of work put into each book she writes to share with the world, and that’s the paycheck. I was BEYOND insulted for her. And yet, this is often the norm. If she sells 20,000 books, her take-home is $10,000, before taxes. After taxes, it’s a grave insult, but this is such a common theme. It’s why so many people have turned away from traditional publishing and have started self-publishing. And yet, most self-published titles (not all, just most) are poorly edited, riddled with mistakes and major errors, and read like first drafts that were rushed. So when a close friend asked if I thought my manuscript would sell “this month”, I had to explain to her that it is a lengthy, oftentimes frustrating process to get anything sold.
Moreover, I have committed myself to writing a spec piece on Chronic Pain disorders and actual pain patients’ experiences from diagnosis to now. I will be interviewing people by phone and e-mail to get their stories into a series of articles. I write this in the hope that our voices will be heard, but I’m also not selling it for pennies on the dollar, either. It’s an important story that needs to be told, and who better than a pain patient to tell the story? People are reading, and believing, an awful lot of bullshit produced by the media on this particular subject. Patients are outraged, and yet, few of them are willing to stand up and speak up. Venting on message boards and in groups is a waste of time, but participating in something bigger? That’s how you get the right people to listen. If any reader would like to be a part of this, please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know you’d like your story told. I will be changing names for those who aren’t entirely comfortable with their business being put out there for the world,
Today is a brand new day. There’s work to be done, laundry to be washed, phone calls to be made, but if anyone is going to be reading my work this week, it’s gonna be me.
copyright © 2017 by Lisa Marino & Blackbird Serenity, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Page After Page
In less than a month, I’ve written over 220,000 words. Does that sound like a lot? It is. To do it in such a short period of time is a testament to me pushing myself to write every single day, and not to give up when I’ve felt stuck. Even if I only managed one page on a bad day, I still parked my ass in front of the file and went over it, and over it, and over it. It’s called determination, with a healthy dose of bat-shit crazy thrown into the mix.
I’ve written, rewritten, proofed, edited, done additional rewrites, changed the direction up, added new characters, strengthened characters I liked, and here I am, still trying to figure out the true direction of the story. For the first time, I wrote something 100% unplanned. I let it haunt me for three months before I said “Let’s give it a try and see how it goes.” It’s become so much bigger than what I first thought, and I’ve found most of it incredibly easy to write.
The challenge in the work is getting in touch with things I’ve personally found difficult in my life. It’s been therapeutic to work it out on the screen in front of me and allow myself to be authentic within the confines of a fictional novel. Instead of saying “That’s decent, it’ll do.” (something I never say, I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my writing), I’m finding myself excited to get up each day and return to work.
During a radio interview Nora Roberts explained how she began writing under the pseudonym J.D. Robb. Her publisher had, and I’m paraphrasing here, told her to “get a hobby” because her books were selling so well. Instead of deciding to actually take that advice and learn something new or do something fun, she decided to channel it into writing something else. I remember hearing the interview and laughing, until I realized today that I’ve sort of done the same thing. Instead of staying in my comfortable world where I’m 100% writing the truth, I’ve opened a door into a new genre for myself, and have found it’s equally as comfortable, if not more so. If you had suggested this to me ten or even five years ago, I would have laughed in your face. Instead, I’m breaking personal records on what I can achieve. I feel proud of that.
I hate reading things that make me roll my eyes. I hate reading things that don’t feel realistic, to some degree. I also hate feeling like I’m writing the same shit a thousand other people are writing. It gets boring very quickly.
I hate timid characters. They annoy me. I hate the damsel-in-distress nonsense. This is the 21st century, and I don’t know a lot of weak women. Unless you’re writing a period piece set in a different century, lose the giggly, shy female that you’d either slap or kick if you were to meet her tomorrow. Let someone in junior high write that crap.
Some of what I’m writing touches on gender roles. What makes a woman truly strong? What makes a man the right person? What makes a couple work well together? How do you stay strong through difficulties, your own idiocy, lapses in judgment, etc. I prefer to focus on the humanity. What are our characters if not perfectly flawed human-beings?
I have come to realize that most of my female characters (some, not all) are a version of me. If Erika Girardi can be Erika Jayne, then I can channel aspects of who I am into characters, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. I find it incredibly empowering.
When writing male characters, I work hard at channeling the men I know. There is no such thing as the perfect person, but there is such a thing as “the right person for you”, regardless of gender. Several of my friends described me as their soul-mate, from a friendship perspective. I firmly believe we have multiple soul-mates in life that we meet at different times. Some are with us forever and others come and go, leaving their mark. That’s real life. I’m virtually incapable of writing something and not bringing real life to it.
So as I sit here this afternoon, struggling with a scene I feel is emotionally crucial to the story, I have to remind myself to just be real. Take a deep breath and push through. And when I feel like I can’t focus, then it’s time for a break, but I have to get it done. I have to finish it. Maybe not today, but as soon as I can.
Let’s face it; no one would believe I wrote it if it were emotionally false.
copyright © 2017 by Lisa Marino & Blackbird Serenity, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
If You Can Tell Stories…
I disagree. If it didn’t matter how you write, every idiot who thinks they’re the next J.K. Rowling would be published. Bookstores would be overrun with poorly written material that some idiot behind a desk thought would make money, as opposed to truly believing in a story or the author behind it.
Writing is a business. Once the manuscript you work your ass off on is submitted, it’s all business, you are not a person to these people. When someone tells you that your hard work isn’t marketable, even if you have an audience that would happily read it, it’s a let down emotionally. I know many people who’ve left a writing career due to a failed book, or a second manuscript not being picked up by their publisher, etc. They got fed up with the business aspect and decided to throw themselves into other creative endeavors.
I think the right people (those experienced in the individual genres people submit in, not a handful of people who make these decisions) should be reading the manuscripts that get submitted and pushing hard for what is truly good. I read way too many crappy stories from established authors who push out a book or two each year, and are clearly half-assing it. That 100% matters to me as both writer and reader.
Writers Must Be Fair…
In many respects, this is true. While I don’t look at Stephen King as the end all-be all for writing or how to write, I do think he has many valid points.
Written by LISA MARINO-Molchanova 