Filling in the Holes

Ok, so I'll be honest - I'm terrible at outlining. I have managed to get a real basic outline done. All cruicial plot points are noted and most characters catalouged. I wanted to do something more detailed, but, I can't. It's not in me.

So on to the next step: Filling in the Holes.

As I went back through my piece, I eliminated entire sections (and the entire beginning). Chapters 1-3 ended up in the trash with little notes about what new events chapter 1-3 could be. I didn't think the book could just start with chapter 4, but actually just needed a whole new method for how to get to chapter 4.

This means there's lots of little gaps to fill. Finally something fun.

Why is it fun? Because it means writing freely! (At least, mostly.)

Unlike my original drafting process for this novel (which was make it up as I go), I did outline what my gaps would be filled with. I know that Chapter 2 Scene 2 West climbs a apple tree in an orchard while the Fox he met steals his bow. Of course, while I can describe the entire scene is a sentance, I'll need a few more to make it a whole half of a chapter.

Like my original draft though, I'm just going through and writing the scenes. I'm not fussing with them to make them look sparkley and polished. Because, when I start looking through the book again, maybe these new scenes won't be what I needed. So if I spend all that time making them look sparkely, then that's a lot of time wasted.

So, the next step in the revision process is - write all the new scenes needed to fill in holes. Let's see how it goes!

Shannon's Adventures for G4

Sometimes crazy last minute ideas pay off.

So, I wrote a blog recently about how real life sometimes gets in the way of writing. This post is about why.

My husband had the crazy idea to apply for Attack Of The Show's Viewer's Army two weeks before NOLA's Wizard Con while trying to put together an award winning group display for the Hearse Club at the World of Wheels convention that same weekend. I said that probably wasn't best idea, but he said he wanted to try because "what do we have to lose?"

(Our sanity was the answer.)

Our award winning club display

For those of you who don't know, I'm constantly struggling to decide if I want to be a writer or a
filmmaker (and in my head, I would be both). Any time I get to film, especially something professional, I jump at the chance. I love working a camera as much as I love pumping out 50,000 words in the month of November.

Kirk and I filmed little short videos about shooting Wizard Con. Well, he beat me out (which I understand because I'm painfully akward on camera) to host, and G4 sent us this awesome looking microphone and some crappy flip cams and press passes. (OMG! I got to be press! It was amazing!)


Well, I worked my butt off getting the hearse club set up, so I could spend my weekend filming.

So we get to the Con early, staring at the lines of people outside, and how we get to cut the lines cause we're press. Then 10 o'clock rolls around, the doors open and we begin filming.

And it was exciting! We were like mini-celebs. Everyone kept whispering "Look! It's G4!" and the very friendly and helpful Jerry, Wizard Con's publicity guy, came over and introduced himself. Said he'd arrange all the interviews for us.

So we got to work. We filmed lots of B-roll of cool con stuff and started pratice interviews with unimportant people. Some of the organizations like Krewe of the Living Dead and the awesome Krewe of Chebaccus.

Then, with the help of Jerry, we went after the celebrites. We got to meet awesome celebs like Kevin Sorbo (my fav!), Adrianne Curry, the guy in the Chewbacca suit from the original Star Wars, and Micheal Beihn. We got the chance to interview the super smart kids from the Walking Dead, Paul McGillan, and even Adam Baldwin, but they didn't make the segment. (Probably because two of them refused to sign release forms and the minors might have just been tricky.) It was entertaining to see how many of them didn't know who G4 was, but those who did were very friendly and chatted with us while the camera wasn't rolling. Adrianne Curry and Kevin Sorbo were the most chatty. (And I think Kirk has a new celebrity crush.)

Then there was all the cool non-celeb peeps we got to meet, like the 501st (a non-profit raising money for lukemia), the very awesome Daz 3D (who lent us a USB cord so we could dump footage), and the very friendly Star Trek band - Five Year Mission. We chatted with the best of the best for costumes and dropped in on some exclusive panels. Unfortuately, due to time, many of these awesome people didn't make the cut.

We scored some awesome free swag, and then ended up spending plenty of dough on various cool con things, like a signed copy of Chew. And my new parading bag.

As fun as this sounds, it was a lot of work. By the end of the day, we were so wiped, we came home and just crashed. But not before we called G4 to let them know we filled the cameras (a little bit of a stunner from what we gathered).

Then on Wedesday, Feb 8, our segment aired. I did not get to see it live because, well, I don't have G4 (unfortunately) and no one in my immeadate vacinity has it either. But when I did get to see the segment, I couldn't help but dance around the house going "Look it's me! Behind the camera!"

Plus, The ZBBC and Krewe of the Living Dead's Zombie Waldo Takedown publcity stunt totally made the cut.

So, anyway, if you want to see what I did, not just listen to me babble about it, check it out!

Back to Basics - an Ephinony

I have been struggling with getting my plot in order. I have it sort of mapped out, but, as much as I love structure, outlining is something I'm terrible at.

I understand where beats go, and what's suppose to happen when. I really do, but when trying to apply that to my work, it's like herding cats. Difficult and full of little claws.

A book about plot passed by me at work, so I stopped to read the first chapter. I didn't think I was going to learn anything new from reading the first few pages of this book, but I'm always willing to learn something new so I gave it a shot.

Or maybe just get inspiration.

As I was reading the book, I realized that I had forgotten the basics. Years and years of study of the craft and I forget my foundations because I'm so worried about alliteration. Step one of writing a book: Who's your main character and what's their motivation. How could I have forgotten that?

Halfway through writing my first draft I realized that my original MC (The Flamingo Princess - a spunky girl who'd been a flamingo for quite some time, and had become comfortable in her skin) wasn't actually the MC. It was West, originally a side character who acted as the catalyst for change in my flamingo's life. He undergoes the most character change throughout the piece, and I knew then, that this was actually his story. So, when I went to rewrite, I knew I was going to drop some scenes to focus more on him.

But when looking at my plot, I kept feeling overwhelmed and dazed. I didn't know what scenes were missing, and which ones to cut. Who to cut out and who to leave. How to change this to West's story. Because I never thought of it in terms of my MC's motivation.

West wants to go home. Why can't West go home? Because his father kicked him out, and he has to return with a knight's reputation. So, if West wants to get home, now I can look at every conflict as "How is this preventing West from getting home?"

Bingo. I feel like I found the missing link.

As much as we write and rewrite, it's important to always remember the basics. This is perhaps the easiest thing to forget.

So, early in the revision process (before going back and outlining) we need to state: who is this story about and what does he/she want? Then we can look at every scene and say "How is this scene helping/hindering that goal?"

Real Life Gets in the way

Ah look, my first late post. And it's fitting quite fitting. What I wanted to talk about what to do when life gets in the way.

Contrary to what this blog may lead you to believe, I have not been working on my novel as much as I would like. Actually, I have not been working on my novel for two weeks.

Which brings me to the fact that sometimes real life gets in the way. Many of us have other day jobs and can't spend eight hours a day writing. Then sometimes those few hours we have have to go to other activities - friends, families, spouses, other career paths, hospital trips, etc. It just eats away at writing time.

This weekend I had the amazing opportunity to compete in a car show and film for G4 Attack of the Show's Viewer's Army. I couldn't miss out on that, but it was at the cost of working on my writing this weekend.

I don't regret any of my choices this weekend. I had a blast at Wizard Con and the Hearse Club won best club display - which makes us awesome! I wouldn't trade that weekend for any amounts of writing time. It just means that I need to give myself a kick in the butt and do some catch up writing next week.

So, my lesson for this week is that it's ok if you don't make your writing goals sometimes, and don't let it dishearten you!

New Year's Resolutions

As January comes to a close, and some conversations with friends about already failing on new year's resolutions, I got to thinking about what makes a resolution work. Looking back at my goals set for last year, I achieved nearly all of them, and if I didn't, it wasn't for lack of trying. So what was different about my resoultions, which I called goals, from others?

I think any resolution that requires a dramatic lifestyle change over night is going to fail.

That being said, insteading of "writing every day" my resolutions were more along the lines of "write another manuscript" and "revise finished manuscript." I don't write everyday; I don't write every other day. I'm lucky if I write once a week. I tend to stick to my month long Nanowrimos and script frenzys, because, well, it's easier to block out a month than an hour every day. It also keeps the pressure off of me.

If I said "write everyday" and I missed one day, well, I would have already failed that resolution. Since I already failed, why bother? And since I tend to be my own worst emeny, that type of resolution would never work for me. I can't dramatically change my life over night, and I don't think others can either.

Writing everyday is an unreasonable goal; writing more than than two frantic months a year, is not.

So, I like to keep my goals reasonable, and measurable not by days, but by quantiy, like keeping a blog (or 3) over the next year. Of course, this is a slow start - being as I've only managed to get one going. But I see that in Feb, I'll be able to start up another. By keeping, I mean that I post semi-regularly, and don't go months and months without posting. Then I can look back and say, well, I managed to post once a week every week of the year! That's pretty awesome!

I hope this will get me to start a new habbit, such as writing more frequently. And if I write more frequently, this year, then I can write even more next year. Then maybe, I'll be able to do one of thos "write 500 a day" resolutions without having to dramatically change my lifestyle.

Being as it's still a new year, I think there's still plenty of time to revise new year's goals...

So readers, how are you coming along with your goals this year?

Revision is Hard - The Right Tool

Revision is hard, and Scrivener is awesome.

In my last revision post, I mention it was time for me to do something most writer's do befoer they write - outline. So I took a little notebook and wrote a small summary of every chapter of my book down. I also took any notes about new scenes and put them into this new outline as well as deleted scenes that weren't important. Then, I spent a week trying to look at those pages in that little notebook as a whole story.

And that's really hard. I got so frustrated with trying to figure out if I wrote enough details down. Trying to see the holes in the story that I knew were there. I needed a better way of looking at outline, and a little birdy told me to pull out my handy dandy Scrivener.

I could write a whole ode to Scrivener (because I love this program), but I'll stick to talking about what I'm doing with it. I pulled out my copy and realized that I need to update. A major update that was going to cost me $20 bucks. Well, with Christmas just passing and my health insurance sucking, I couldn't afford that week. So I almost let my story lapse. (And I'm sure I'll soon write about avoiding procrastination, because that's sort of what this was.)

But I wouldn't let myself lapse, so I did something new, I rewrote the first scene of the book incorporating some of the changes I knew I wanted to make. It might have only been about 300 words, but it helped pass the time until I could get the $20 bucks to upgrade Scrivener.

And thank god I did. The layout of Scrivener is just what I needed to look at my story a little better. Which leads me to the point of this blog, know what tools work best for you.

Once upon a time, I wrote everything long hand. I swore by long hand. Then Nanowrimo came along and long hand can be the kiss of death. Yet, because of my history with long hand, I returned to it for this revision. Turns out it wasn't working for me - at least not like I wanted it to. Since I've been writing digitally, I need something digital. Scrivener fit the bill.

Everyone is going to have different preferences on what tools they need. But having a good tool is a great resource to sticking on track with revision. For me, that tool is Scrivener. But I think it's important for writers to mess around with all sorts of tools. Finding something that helps in the revision process is priceless, so download that free trial and see what's out there!

Short Story: Amphibious

So, yesterday marked the beginning of the voting period for Figment Fiction's Cinder short story contest. My entry "Amphibious" is up, so if you like my blog, head over and read it.

I have two reasons for my shameless self promotion:

1. Maybe you'll heart it, because, well, I want to win.

2. I'm putting my money where my mouth is so to speak.

Many of you readers have not read any of my work, so you may wonder, how I can be any authority on anything. Well, this does prove I write, and you can sort of gague my skill. And I know that if I were you I'd be interested in seeing what I write.

And as a bonus, I get to talk a little about my process for this story.

"Amphibious" is a short, horror/sci-fi story retelling the "Frog Prince." It's actually an idea I've had floating in my head for a few years now, orginally as a short film. Well, I never made it as a short film, and my film team never seemed to be interested in it. So when I saw the Cinder genre mash-up contest, I figured, what the hell.

Interestingly, I always imagined the main character (May) being a professor. But when I saw the challege was more for the young adult crowd, I tried to see if there was anyway to make May younger. She knew her boyfriend/fiance wasn't talking to her (via a ring), so her engagement ring became a class ring. I knew I wanted to mention the glowfish, and originally May was telling a student those facts, but it became May learning about those facts. I was really surprised at how easily all my points could be swaped for a younger protagonist (which actually makes the story more gruesome).

I started writing this maybe a week and a half ago. It went though 4 to 5 revisions. The first revision involved any major plot changes (such as the ending). The second revision was to make sure I didn't skip any details and I foreshadowed anything of importance. Revisions three through five were mostly line edits. I wanted to make sure everything was clear, and that I used the best words I could think of. Hmmm, this is probably a map for what I'll need to do with my novel...

Honestly, I wish I had more time for revision. While I like the story, I still think it could use some more work. But, feel free to read it, critique, tell me if you love it or hate it, ease your curisoity, etc. And enjoy!