Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

rewrite

Writing Process: I Figured It Out

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After taking a hard if biased look at my current WIP, I figured out what’s been causing the writer’s block.

WritersBlock2.png
But less cute.

You don’t see the antagonist.

At the 45k word point, you still haven’t met him.

I have read a great deal of writing help on making sure you develop your villain. Make them a hero in their own story.

While I know a great deal about the antagonist, everything he has been doing is behind the curtain. It’s something the characters must respond to, but the reader doesn’t see him.

This is partially on purpose as the antagonist doesn’t want you to know it’s him. He wants to stay hidden. He wants you to think it’s someone else, and he’s done a decent job of setting up that person.

Villain
More he loves power. But not too far off.

However, at this point in the story, I really need him to take a more active role. His plans are hanging in the balance. He wouldn’t allow them to fall apart because of inaction.

But, I haven’t shown him yet. It’s hard to do a big reveal when the reader doesn’t know him or anything about him.

At the same time, as a romance story is traditionally only told through the eyes of the hero or heroine, I can’t just jump into his head and show my audience what’s happening.

I need to go back and rework the story. Find a way to show who he is without revealing him.

That means a pretty significant rewrite on a piece of work that isn’t complete.

I try really hard not to do this, but I truly see no way forward. He must step up now and take action.

I suppose I could try the random reveal and then work him back into the story later.

I will ponder both options and see which way has the characters talking to me again.

writers-block-when-your-imaginary-friends-refuse-to-talk-to-24442489

 

NaNoWriMo 2017

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I will not be doing NaNoWriMo this year. I know, strange to hear an author say that, but here are the five reasons why I won’t be joining in the “fun”.

 

  • I Already Wrote Three First Drafts This Year – Not quite the four per year of more established romance authors, but I feel like it’s still an accomplishment. Maybe not the book in a month of NaNoWriMo, but clearly I already have the motivation to produce.

 

  • I have Five Books That Need Revising – In addition to the three new first drafts I produced this year, I also have two other books in need of revision. I need to be focusing on that as much, if not more, than producing new content right now.
rewrite2
Yeah, about like that.

 

  • Prep Book For Publishing – I am seriously considering the self-publishing route right now. I’ve been querying a completed book, and I haven’t found any agents interested. But this means I need to spend some of my writing time formatting the book and figuring out how to launch it rather than write.

 

  • I want My Family to NOT Hate Me – This is a big one. I have that full time day job, and November is one of my busiest times of the year. Even busier than year-end and tax season. Combine that with Thanksgiving, two amazing kids, and a wonderful spouse, and they just don’t need the crap. Seriously. Trying to churn out 1.7k words a day is hard. It’s daunting. And it requires a commitment from the whole family I’m not willing to ask.

 

  • Stress Kills Creativity –  For me, NaNoWriMo isn’t motivating, it’s stressful. That makes it even harder to be creative, especially in an already stressful time of my life.
stressed
Me starting mid-October to April 16th

 

  • I Want Writing to Stay Fun – The reason I write is because I love to create character and worlds. I love to see good triumph and get my happily-ever-after. I’ve loved reading since I was a small kid, and I decided I wanted to write after reading some books with crappy endings. I wanted control. To see things resolved properly. No control issues here. Nope. None at all.
control
Me reading a book. Yup.

The one thing I’ve learned is every writer is different. What works for me doesn’t work for them. So, if NaNoWriMo is something that helps a writer achieve their goals, great!

I simply haven’t found it helpful, and for things like work-life-family balance, I’ve found it detrimental. I’m much happier with my five-hundred words-a-day goal. A lot of days I get more, but most days I get at least the five-hundred. It works for me.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, I’ll still be here, but I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines.

How about you? Do you find deadlines like NaNoWriMo beneficial? Do deadlines help motivate you? Or do you find the added stress actually makes it harder to achieve your goals?

Facing Rejection

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I hear myself telling DD1 all the time that it doesn’t matter if she succeeds or fails, I’m proud of her for trying her hardest. For really putting in the effort. She sometimes believes me, and other times I get the annoyed preschooler look.

fear1
I totally don’t deserve it.

But, I have to walk the walk now that I’ve written, edited, rewrote, edited, rewrote again, and finally polished Crowned Prince.

I decided I wanted to try getting an agent and go the traditional publishing route if possible. There are pros and cons to both indie publishing and traditional, but I at least wanted to try traditional. Partially for their experience, but mostly for their amazing editors.

I know, I know, but one is not in the budget for us right now. While I take my writing seriously, I also take paying for two kids in daycare seriously. Don’t know if it’s like this everywhere, but where I live, my daycare bill is about twice the cost of an average mortgage payment. So, yeah, not much else is in the budget right now.

If I’m going to find an agent, I need to either meet one at a conference or query one. As a mom with two small children who works full time already, finding time or money for a conference also isn’t in the budget. So that means querying.

fear2
Not this kind of querying.

And being rejected A LOT.

I have a feeling your chances of getting in to Harvard are probably better. After all, they accept 5.2% of their applicants. But, if I want to get an agent, I have to query them.

This is like a lot of things in life.

  • Maybe you don’t like your job, but that means putting yourself out there to find a new one.
  • Maybe you’re single and want to meet someone.
  • Maybe you want to be an actor, but that means showing up for the auditions.

Everything is life is scarce. And the more you want it, the more of yourself you have to put out there to get it.

That means facing the very real risk of rejection. Of failure. Or not being good enough. Talented enough. Just not enough.

The platitude of at least you tried your hardest feels less genuine then, though, really, that’s when it matters most. Trying. Not giving up.

fear3

Persistence in the face of rejection is especially hard when you put so much of yourself into something. Like a job. Or a relationship. Or writing a book. Because this feels like a personal rejection. And we’re a heard animal. It’s ingrained in us to be part of the pack as those that weren’t usually didn’t have a happy ending.

But, I must face failure. I have to try, as I tell my daughter she must.

So I started the process. Looking up agents, trying to see who they represent and what they sell to see if I’ll be a fit. I even queried a few.

And got my first rejection.

It hurt less than I thought it would. But it still hurt.

 

How about you? Ever put yourself out there for something? Maybe a new job? A relationship? A book query? How did it go? Did it go better than you thought? If it didn’t, was the rejection or failure as bad as you thought it’d be?

 

Kindness Matters. So Does Empathy.

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kindness

This is so amazingly true.  Everyone is experiencing life, and you may or may not know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

I try to remember this when I get cut-off in traffic. Maybe, just maybe, the person in front of me got a call from their daycare, and they’re rushing to get a sick child. Or they can’t afford to be late to work because they’ll lose their job, but their kids’ bus was late picking them up. Or they just learned their mother died and aren’t thinking straight.

It’s possible they’re just a jerk. Looking at you man in the red pickup truck that made a left turn in front of me and flipped me off. I almost didn’t stop in time, and pickup truck versus minivan isn’t a pretty sight for either of us. It took me the next half-hour to stop shaking.

But maybe, just maybe, there is something else going on.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. But it’s different when we do it, right?

Except, it’s not.

I was at FedEx the other night to pick-up a package, and a woman was there with two little kids. The boy was being especially difficult, and I could see she was trying really hard to keep them under control. Rather than glaring at her, I smiled at the kids, waved at the little girl, and told her my daughter loved My Little Ponies, too.

The girl was wearing a MLP shirt.

Completely eased the tension, and it cost me nothing. I was able to continue to ignore the boy as the girl talked all about ice skating and Pinkie Pie. The boy was still surly, but he was coming around for his mom and sister.

No idea what happened in any of their day, but I certainly didn’t need to make it worse even if I was getting frustrated with FedEx as it took them fifteen minutes to find my package. A smile and a nice word made everything more pleasant.

I’m not sure why we don’t practice it more. Why it’s so much “cooler” to come back with some snarky comment than it is to show kindness. Why we’ve equated kindness with weakness.

Kindness is not weakness.

kind2

It actually took me some time to realize I was making this mistake, and I almost completely rewrote a character because she was kind.

Yeah, I know. I’m not immune to culture either.

Part of the reason why the hero fell in love with this character was her kindness, that inner light that refused to dim despite everything she’d been through.

I was going to change that because I mistakenly assumed that made her a weak character. It didn’t. It was part of who she was, and it made her no more weak than my smart-mouthed character in a separate book. Different, but not weak.

What do you think? Do you equate kindness with weakness? Do you try to see the other side, even if it is a jerk in a red pickup truck that almost killed you both? Perhaps you’ve known a jerk in a red pickup yourself?

Endings Suck

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As humans, we aren’t really wired to cope with endings. For much of human history, food was scarce and predators a very real threat. We had to seize the moment. Eat whatever food was available. Fend off immediate threats.

Think about it. There are no “good” endings.

  • The end of a relationship, even if we’re the one that ended it.
  • The end of a candy bar
  • The end of a book
  • The end of life itself

While ending a book isn’t anywhere near as epic as the end of life itself, a reader has invested many precious hours of their life into what I’ve written.

They deserve a good ending. When they don’t get it, fans riot.

Remember Mass Effect? If you never played it, many of the fans of the game were angry at how the writers ended the trilogy. We’d invested ourselves in three full games, only to be cheated at the end.

I suspect they ended it the way they did to lure players into a MMO that they were planning.

Instead of launching that MMO, they ruined their brand, and many players, myself included, haven’t touched the game since.

end2

As an author, ending the story is as important as beginning it. Maybe more important.

If the writer kills off the characters to get that ending, don’t expect to see me investing my time in another one of their books. I don’t just expect happily-ever-after, I demand it. This is my escape. If I want sad, I have the Economist for that.

I’ve heard the excuses:

  • But it doesn’t give me the impact I want. I need a Romeo and Juliet ending.
  • I have a message, a happy ending doesn’t convey it
  • But some stories just don’t have a happy ending
  • I need a jump-off to my next novel (which is a fast way to make me angry. Give me a whole story, a complete story, and let the next book(s) stand on its own)

 

My response to these excuses:  Get more creative.  I want better. I want an ending worth the time I invested.

With these thoughts in mind, I started to edit the ending of my current novel. After a couple of hours, I knew the ending sucked. Not Mass Effect sucked, but it was still bad.

end1

My beta reader was right. It needed something more. Something epic. A man has to choose between right and wrong, and his choices dictate not only his life but that of a kingdom. This should grip the reader and make them anxious before resolving it.

I cut over 8,000 words. That’s 10% of my novel. And I started over to write a better ending. To write an ending that would make the reader do a fist pump. To write an ending worthy of the time the reader spent in my world.

Yeah, it’s hard to cut that many of my darlings. Again. But I hope it’ll be worth it in the end.

 

How about you? Do you prefer a happy ending? Do you demand it? Ever do a massive rewrite and watch a huge chunk of your story disappear behind the Delete key? Ever have to rewrite a whole ending?

 

 

The Joy of . . .

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Editing. You knew I was going to say editing.

After working through my latest book, I now have three in various stages of editing. While I thought I was to the finish line with Knight of Valor, some feedback I received on point-of-view is going to require a massive rewrite. Not in my bag of tricks at the moment. I am too invested in these characters still. Maybe not good, but I have other choices.

So that leaves the story I just finished or Crowned Prince. I’ve learned I can’t edit well when I’m too close to the story, and I’ve really only gone through Crowned Prince three times.

Some of you may write a pretty awesome first draft. That would not be me.

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Yeah, kinda like this.

 

I’m somewhat amused by non-writer friends who think a revision requires some fine-tuning of spelling and punctuation. While that might have worked for their college term papers, I want so much more from my writing. After all, I can’t think of a single college term paper I’d have spent precious free-time reading.

Rewriting, as hard and messy and unpleasant as it can be, has a certain joy of its own. You get to watch your half formed lump of clay look a little more like David and a little less like that play-doh project your toddler made.

Crowned Prince is in decent shape, but I need a more epic ending according to my beta reader. I get it, and I agree with it. The ending did feel rather taped on after all the other events of the story. I sometimes fall down at the end in my early drafts, and I need to clean that up.

I also need to work through point-of-view issues. Easier for me to do in Crowned Prince for some reason. Fortunately, I got that advice before I started my third novel, so the POV in that will be easier as it was written to follow the “new rules”.

So there it is. My project over the next few weeks (months?). Last time I delved into editing, my daughter was diagnosed with some medical issues. I didn’t have it in me to give the editing the full attention it deserved. I did get through it, but not the way I should have.

So, time to start again. And let’s hope this time it goes a little better.

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How about you? Does your first draft require a lot of editing? They say writing is rewriting. Have you found that to be true? Any tricks you use in your rewriting or editing process?