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So, now what?

by ana
Posted to Diaries, Diary on Sun Jul 30, 2006 at 06:18:15 PM PST
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In which the author muses about the editing process.
OK, So I've now written a couple of November Novels (NoNo, what I'm calling my entries in National Novel Writing Month. It's clear that in the rush to accomplish 50,000 words in a month, the plot suffered a bit, in both cases.

I think both stories are worth the telling, but the few readers they've had kind of went "um, where did that come from?" about various plot elements, character traits, and such.

So, how to edit. I have some ideas of what to do with the second effort, which I wrote last November (2005). The villain needs more sympathetic treatment, more backstory, more why is he there and how does he know what he knows kinds of stuff. The protagonistas need more different voices; real-life readers have told me that they hear my voice whenever one of them opens her mouth to speak.

I've been writing some half-hour and hour-sized vignettes about various of the characters, just to see if any of them have stuff they still need to tell me. I think they're at least mostly consistent with the canon, but it's hard to know.

So I think I need to sit down and read the existing version, right through, making extensive notes. I used a tiddlywiki to keep track of stuff while I was writing, but I find certain details went unrecorded in the rush to finish the actual novel. So that needs filling in, just so I have things written down in one convenient place.

I also kept track of a fictional timeline, so even though the dates of each scene are not recorded in the text itself, they were (at one time) known to me. I think that's all in the tiddlywiki, but I must check that.

I guess what's next is an intensive read-through, as above, and then I'll perhaps be ready to spend an hour a day (or whatever I find time for) writing. Not as intensely as last November, to be sure, but then there's no time pressure for this, except that I'd like to show myself (and others) that I can do this. And, I'm told, there might be other people who'd like to read a story more or less like what I've written.

Advice would be welcome. Random links for google's attention are not.

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    So, now what? | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
    now what, indeed (5.00/1) (#1)
    by sabeth on Fri Aug 04, 2006 at 09:14:49 PM PST
    I know I owe you extensive comments, as opposed to these random thoughts when you post something NaNo-related. It's one of the things in the to-do structure that alternates between being a stack and a queue.

    I think one of the things that happens while NaNoing is that you end up writing whatever is writing itself that day, as it were. Just tacking on more verbiage in the same vein as what's been set down before. That accomplishes something, but it does mean the pacing gets a bit wonky (especially during the "dammit am I at 50,000 words yet" portion of the exercise). You can try to plan out vague arcs beforehand (I did) but even so, what you write to fill out the beat you thought you needed might not be the right something, or later developments may make that progression not quite right, in retrospect (both these things happened to me). Now that you kinda sorta know where everyone starts and ends up, mebbe you can smooth out some of those curves.

    In your NaNo '05 (which is more fresh in my mind), I have two main impressions of things that could be tweaked (not supported by a thorough rereading at this time). One, you've already alluded to: the antagonist. He tended to drop out of the picture in favor of the characters you're already friends with, so lacked the same depth and all that stuff you said he needs. I dunno if you need to track where he is on every story day so he doesn't wander off, but say, try to include him in every nth chapter or so. Or perhaps if you can manage to integrate him more firmly into the Gang, that will all flow more naturally (though I think we need to see a little of him solo, as well).

    The other thing was a passage-of-time thing ... I remember there being a big leap in time from Christmas-ish to Spring Break. That was sort of sudden and weird. Possibly you could write the book in two parts, "Fall" and "Spring" (are your various academics at institutions with semesters rather than some other system?) which might be an interesting structure, but would still need the other months to be filled out a bit more. Ultimately the pacing in chapter-space is more important than in story-time, I think; just as long as there are some clear signposts and transitions that help the reader keep up.


    I'm having trouble with my own NaNo revisions, partly because, while I think there might be something there, I'm not sure what the shape of it should actually be. There turned out to be so much stuff in it, it's hard to decide what should stay, what should go, what should change (in what direction), and what is missing. I've also been doing some noodling around with scenes featuring the same characters (unfortunately, they all seem to be set in the sequel of what I've already written, rather than revisions/fleshing out of the existing story ... though even that gives me some ideas about what to work toward). To be honest, I'm a little afraid to dive back into what I've already done. It's like a fort made out of blocks stacked haphazardly on each other -- I know it's not sound but I'm not quite ready for it all to come tumbling down so I can rebuild it better.

    Meanwhile, I keep being distracted by other stories I've worked on since and the characters they bring with them. Getting awfully crowded in my head.

    --ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--

    So, now what? | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
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