Hmm it was a slow day on the blogging pages, I checked hourly. I know Sam was trying to study, I assume Katie is likewise, Indigo is travelling (I think), and Jill lives in Barrie (like they have computers there psh) ;). Anyway I decided as I am doing nothing I would try and amuse some people with my blog.
Today I will be talking about why my last novel failed. I may even pull out random passage to make my blog seem longer. Who knows?
Anyway the first mistake I made when writing my novel was writing about something I had absolutely no knowledge of. Now I am not saying that you can’t write about anything you don’t know but it certainly helps to have even the basic knowledge of what you are writing about. Foolishly, I thought that I could make up not one but four (five? I can’t even remember) different worlds. Not only that I had to come up with different societies on each world. What was I thinking? Am I that creative? Not even close. I can generate ideas fairly well but I can tell you that was out of my realm of possibility. I remember thinking that it would be easy to come up with original ideas and creating worlds with their own personality. Not true. Like I needed another reason to respect some of my favourite Sci-fi writers (Tolkien, Scott, Lucas) but creating whole believable (maybe not the best adjective) worlds is really difficult. Here is a paltry description of one of the worlds, Ellesar.
Dominic was wandering the forests of Ellesar with his best friend looking for local fleeces to hunt. These days due to Lord Rever huge taxes there was not much food in the Hugro household and Saleer’s family was not doing much better so they had decide to go to the forests looking for game. The game they feared might be suffering as much as their cities but to their pleasant surprised once they were 7 kilometers removed from the city centre they found a good flock of fleeces. It surprised them so much that they did not have their weapons out in time to catch one and they all flew away.
Mistake number 2. I created too many characters that I did not know anything about. Maybe it’s just me but I find it easier to write characters that I can understand their motivations. One of the things that annoys me the most about some books, movies, TV shows, etc is when characters do things that are completely out of character and wrong. It’s like last nights Bones when Booth and Cam, two fairly law-abiding citizens, let Bones steal a dead person at a funeral. What! I know it is a TV but it’s so out of line of the characters that arghh I am so annoyed. I made this mistake myself. The way I developed my characters was not the same way that I wanted to develop my story. I forced my characters into positions that they never should have been and then force them out of character to get them out of these situations. This aspect of writing greatly frustrated me and made me dislike my characters (and it wasn’t even their fault). It didn’t make me want to write because I never felt the excitement for my characters that Katie, Jill, Indigo felt about theirs. It also did not help that I never had a true main character to shape my story around. In any case, this time my characters will have identities that I understand.
Mistake number 3. Not forcing myself to write. At school I am a very concise writer. I write as few words as possible. It’s not the best strategy when you are writing a novel and are desperately trying to reach 50,000 words. This time I will be forcing myself to write if I have to skip work and stay up until late to make sure I get those words.
Overall I think I need to ground my story on Earth and keep it to things I know about. This will help me narrow my focus and have a more character focused story which I think I will enjoy writing more. I am currently thinking of how to incorporate “Bruin” into my story. Updates tomorrow!
Best line: "and it wasn't even their fault"
ReplyDeleteOne more tip: I can't remember what part of the book, but maybe the chapter of No
Plot? No Problem (henceforth, NPNP) about week 3? They had a sidebar that was hilarious about how to add extra words. For example, create a really long name for your character and then do a search-and-replace. If you name the character Sarah, and mention her a hundred times, that's only 100 words. If you rename her Sarah the Fearsome, that's 300. Duchess Sarah Guinevere the Fearsome, and you're up to 500! They also recommend having characters that quote at length from famous works of fiction. :)
Scott, that seems like a logical breakdown of last year's fail. I agree with you completely about hating when fictional characters do things out of character. For me, that was the most exciting thing about writing and what made it so enjoyable was not really knowing what the characters were going to do, but kind of letting them decide.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows my favourite strategy for bolstering word count. Swearing is not only enjoyable in and of itself, but can add almost limitless numbers of words to sentences. Or, alternatively, swear words can be sentences on their own. Anyway, I need to go write my own blog for today. Later.
Scott, I am pleased that you took one for the team and wrote an extended piece on why you are such a failure. I am optimistic about your sophomore effort, however, because you appear to have learned from your mistakes and are looking to the future.
ReplyDeleteAnd if I see you making those same mistakes, I will not hesitate to call on Bruin to slap you in the face with a fish and jersey you.