Tag: process

Character Creation

Laura Highcove

I don’t really plan my characters. I may have a vague idea that I need a character in a certain place and they might be kinda like this. But I never know my characters until I write them. I consciously put more of myself in Tabitha than any other character I’ve written in the past. And even that didn’t happen until I had written a lot of her already. In fact I remember the specific place where Tabitha shoved her personality in my face.

It was a similar situation with Wildrose, in that he ended up being a lot like my husband unintentionally, and later I put more pieces of my husband in there. At the same time he is himself.

And some characters come more easily than others. The Huntsman was the most difficult character for me in this novel. I literally did not pin him down until several drafts in. He was going to be the huge gruff guy, then the comedic relief, and who knows what else. He flopped all over the place until he finally settled where he is.

In general, I don’t think I ever look at a character or a person and set out to write any of my characters based on them. It just drifts that way as I go, but then I am a discovery writer. I am convinced that those characters just exist in my brain and I write until I pull enough of them out.

Kill Your Darlings

Laura Highcove

It is a common phrase said to writers, to ‘Kill Your Darlings’. Basically what it means is that sometimes a writer writes something that they just love. A character, a scene, a line that is just amazing. Only that thing either doesn’t improve the story, or in some cases, drags it down. Only the writer doesn’t want to get rid of it because it’s just so cool. This makes it hard to admit to yourself that you need to get rid of it.

I had (at least) one such darling in The Storyteller. Tabitha is going into the Huntsman’s castle to look for the sword. In the first version of the story it read like this:

Tabitha marched toward the castle doors. They opened easily at her touch. She did not let herself hesitate on entering the magical castle. The doors thudded shut behind her.

“Should we have warned him about the demons?” the Man in Black asked, glancing at the Wizard.

“He didn’t ask.”

I even got positive feedback from early readers about those last two lines. And I loved them. And those darlings stuck around until Draft 9 when I finally admitted to myself (because I knew before that, but I was clinging to those lines) that for the rest of the book the narrator sticks right on top of Tabitha, and having any narration when Tabitha is not in the room just doesn’t work. On top of that, while it’s a nice sting, that information is not necessary. Tabitha runs into a demon in the next scene.

It still hurt to delete those words though.

Awesome Writing Moments

Laura Highcove

I am a discovery writer. When I was young I would sit down with nothing but a vague idea and the world and characters would pop out as I wrote. Now that I’m older, and have more skill, I tend to have some of the story itself planned out, maybe vague ideas for the world and characters before I start, but for the most part I can’t plan too much or I flounder.

And I love being a discovery writer because of how those ideas seem to come from nowhere. I get ideas for stories from all over the place, but when I am in the process of writing, I just write my characters doing things or stuff about the world and that random stuff turns out to be super important later in the story. It basically feels like magic, like my brain is working on a higher level and puts things together without me realizing it. Moments like these are always awesome writing moments.

For example: I had Tabitha like apples. I’m pretty sure it started out that way because her kingdom is always in autumn, and apples are a fall crop. Later I realized the apples were part of a very important plot point.

It is this ability for my mind to make these connections that gives me a lot of comfort when I’m writing and feel like I have no idea where I’m going. I’ve learned to trust myself. One of my mantras is: “There is a way all of this will make sense, I just have to find it.”

Where My Ideas Come From

Laura Highcove

A lot of times people ask writers: ‘Where do your ideas come from?’ to which the usual reply is, ‘Everywhere.’ While this is basically true. While it seems like an idea pops out fully formed, it is likely that you’re only hearing about it once a lot of ideas from all over the place will finally come together in that one lightning bolt moment.

I can get little ideas from tv shows or movies I watch, other books I read, from music I listen to, or even just things I see or hear during the course of my day. It’s taking all those little sparks and organizing them until you hit that one piece that brings it all together …sort of like the straw that broke the camel’s back, only it’s a good thing.

For the Storyteller, that moment was while I was reading through lesser known fairy tales on the Internet and I read one called The Little Wildrose. When I read that the main character was carried off and then raised by eagles, that’s when the lightning struck my brain. I had wanted to write a story with fairy tales where the characters are aware that the fairy tales are a thing every since I read Mercedes Lacky’s The Fairy Godmother. It wasn’t until this point that I finally had the idea of where to start.

And even with that idea, I had a false start where Wildrose was the main character and was going into the tales alone. This is where I got the idea for playing with genders though, as I made Wildrose male and had him interacting with a female Bluebeard. A few months later I wrote 90k words in October and November with Tabitha as the main character and the rest is now history.

Music and Writing

Laura Highcove

I know it is rather popular for writers to write to music, but I never listen to music when I am writing. Like I said yesterday, when I am writing new prose, I need to have it quiet with no outside stimuli. I tend to not listen to music when I revise either.

But that doesn’t mean music isn’t super important to my writing process. I have songs that I associate with my different stories and whenever I hear them, in the car or while I’m at work, that gets my brain going on that particular story. Sometimes that means I’ll have notes that I need to jot down real quick. Other times it means it just helps me to think through the story.

Songs that I associate with The Storyteller series:
Demons by Imagine Dragons
Payphone by Maroon Five
A Thousand Years by Christina Perri

Where I Write

Laura Highcove

Writing for me happens almost exclusively on electronic devices now. I used to have a little notebook in my back pocket, but transcribing was a beast, especially if I was writing out an entire scene. That was before I got my new phone and the Scrivener app which I simply love. It comes in such handy when I’m at work because I can quickly jot down ideas/scenes and then just transfer it over when I get home. But where I write depends on what I am doing at the time.

New prose is done either on my phone (when I’m out of the house) or my netbook, which I take into the basement. I tend to get distracted very easily when I’m writing new prose, so I have to remove myself from the Internet and my laptop where there are tons of great distractions. I also need it to be quiet with as little outside stimuli as possible. This is why I go to the basement, just to completely avoid my husband who works from home, and the cats, who like to demand attention.

Revising takes place on my laptop, which is hooked up to a large monitor so my screen is larger and I can see more words at once. I am a lot less likely to get distracted when revising. Plus, with my style of writing there is a ton of moving files and words around so a mouse is necessary. I have been known to revise pretty effectively even in busy, public places. I guess once the words are down, they stay in my head better.

What I Learned from NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

Last year I realized that NaNoWriMo was too easy for me. I have participated every year since 2008, and have won every year but two. This year I decided to give myself a new challenge, 90,000 words. Not quite double the original goal, but actual novel length. I went into NaNoWriMo with the first anticipation I’d had in years. I failed to reach my goal. But it’s not about the failure, but about analyzing the why and learning what I can from it.

Why did I fail?

1) I started out with a goal of 3,000 words a day. Then I reached my first Friday and had no time for writing (due to my normal schedule, I just didn’t take it into account.) I caught up Saturday by writing 6,000 words, which is more than I’ve ever written in a single day, and that burned me out. I changed my daily goal to 3,500 with no writing needed on Fridays. I couldn’t keep this up either.

2) This story came out in a way I was not used to. That being: I wrote scenes out of order, and multiple times before I wrote something that moved the story forward. I don’t know if this was caused by my sudden need for such a large amount of words, the fact that this was a sequel, that I’ve learned so much craft in the two years since I wrote The Storyteller, or something else entirely. Either way, the result is that my forward momentum kept coming to a screeching halt, and while I could produce words, I wasn’t actually moving the story.

3) Politics. I’m actually not kidding. Despite your opinion about who should’ve won or why, the amount of anger and hate that existed on the Internet in the days following the election wrecked me emotionally. I had to abandon Facebook completely.

What did I learn?

1) While 1667 words a day is pretty easy, 3,500 is not. I believe it might be because writing this much didn’t give me enough time in between to think about my story and live my life. I felt very dry, creatively. In the third week I backed off the schedule I had set for myself for a few days and after a few days the ideas started flowing again. So what I learned is I should try something closer to 2,000 words a day for a while.

2) I am a multi-drafter. For those who haven’t read my blog previously, I know that one part of my process is that I write, go back and rewrite from the beginning and go a little further into the story, then go back and repeat. While somehow I managed to plow right through the Storyteller two years ago, that did not work this time. So I also learned that I need to let myself stop an reassess when I need to, otherwise I end up just spinning my wheels.

3) I also learned I should’ve removed myself from the toxic environment online more quickly. As much as I wanted to support the people who were scared, my emotional well being is more important.

NaNo Speedbump

Laura Highcove

I met and passed the 50k NaNoWriMo goal. The problem I’m finding myself in now, is that I had to stop and organize what I’d written. I had no idea what had happened because I was writing scenes multiple times (yay discovery writer). Organization takes time away from producing words. And with my brother’s wedding and the holiday coming up, it would be hard enough to write 3.5k words a day, much less spend an hour or two reorganizing as well.

So I took a step back to remind myself what I was trying to accomplish this month. I could put out the words, that’s not a problem. But my goal is to write the sequel to The Storyteller and the less organized my writing, the slower my forward progress. Right now I have two or three versions of most of the scenes with only a vague idea of which one is the one I’ll keep.

I realized I was wasting too much time rewriting scenes. I am learning so much from this month, but I can feel that I’m not being efficient by pounding out words, so I’m stopping, reassessing, and reorganizing. Hopefully in a day or two I’ll have a new plan for how many more words I need to get done, and then I can plow ahead.

Starting NaNoWriMo

Laura Highcove

I am now several days into NaNo and it is kicking my butt. This feels more like I remember my first NaNos, when it was a struggle to come up with 1667 words in a day. This month I started off doing 3k a day to reach my goal of 90k for the month. I’m pretty sure that I will never get many words on Fridays, since I work 7:30-5:30 and Friday night is when the hubby and I go grocery shopping, so the whole day is pretty much gone. The plan was to make up Friday’s words on Saturday, like I have in the past. Writing 6k words in a day ruined me pretty hard. This morning (Sunday) it took me three hours to get 1700 words.

I had to shift my approach. I decided I won’t expect any words on Fridays and divied those words to the other days. So now my goal is 3500, six days a week. Am I pushing myself past what is comfortable? Heck yeah, but I can do it for a month, and I have a good reward waiting for myself.

The Huntsman is probably the one story I have the most ‘outline’ for before I started writing it. Mostly because as I was finishing The Storyteller, I filled my head with all the things that needed to happen in the next book(s). As such, my writing process has shifted to a ‘stitcher’, super hard on this book. I am writing scenes in completely random order, as the ideas come to me, because if I don’t write them down then I will forget them. The idea is after I write it all, I will go back to order and smooth it out. This is not entirely dissimilar to my normal writing style, there will just be far more stitching required.

I am having to constantly remind myself that the important thing right now is to get through the words. Get through the story. It’s all there, even if it’s not organized right now. It has been a real struggle.

Back from Beta Readers

Laura Highcove

So this past week was a delightful collection of both wonderful and completely horrid moments. As you may have guessed, I got my story back from my beta readers! It ultimately ended up going pretty much as well as can be expected from sending your baby out into the world for the first time. All of the comments were positive or the helpful kind of critique.

However, there was a misunderstanding about part of the story, and the comments regarding that section left me in three days of misery. Both beta readers jumped to the same conclusion and since it was an emotionally charged scene, it left a rather deep emotional impression on them that was not what I was going for. It took some dwelling on comments and reading between the lines to figure out that they had reached a conclusion that was not the one for which I was aiming.

Once I figured out the misunderstanding and had talks with the both of them, things turned out much better and all of the critique they gave me was entirely manageable. I mean, sure I’d love for it to have already been perfect, but then making mistakes is how you learn.

This is the first time I’ve ever had a person besides my alpha reader husband, read through a whole story of mine, and it was an amazing experience. One of my beta readers had trouble with names, since different characters call each other different names. It didn’t occur to me, since I live with these characters. The other was much more in tune to how information was parsed out to the reader, pointing out places I had done it well and places I had done it poorly. After reading the comments and seeing the way both of the beta reader’s minds worked through the story I feel like I was able to see the story in a new light.