Good Progress

On November 21st, I posted here that I had 29 scenes left to write and that I would be happy with completing two of them per week. Well, it's been about a month and I've been very pleased with my pace. I've done five per week.

First, my 29 scenes grew to 31. Out of those 31, I have finished 20 of them. So just 11 to go. So at that pace, I should be done in just over two weeks. However, here we are at Christmas and New Year's, so I'm sure I'll slow down a bit. Right now, my goal is to be finished by the end of January.

Of course, "finished" is a relative term. It still needs to be copy edited for errors, I've got to design and format the book, develop or acquire artwork for the cover and interiors, navigate the binding and publishing process, acquire an ISBN number and.... probably a couple dozen other details I'm not even aware of, yet.

But by "finished", I mean I can start writing the second book in the series while all this other editing/formatting/publishing stuff gets worked out. I hope it will go quickly. We'll see.

Character Sketch: Lucas Griffon

Lucas Griffon is the younger brother of Galen. As the story begins, he is sixteen years old and resentful towards what he perceives as Galen's preferred status.


Lucas never knew his father. His mother was widowed while she carried Lucas in her womb. He has grown up in Galen's shadow and is eager to earn the same accolades that seem to come to his brother so easily.


I am really pleased with this drawing, I think it came out very well. I had been drawing sketches of Galen for years, but had never given a lot of thought to a look for Lucas. Then one day I drew this with a ballpoint on the back of some computer paper and I fell in love with it. I think I really nailed the definitive look for Lucas with this illustration.


I scanned it in, cleaned it up and colored it. I knew I wanted a darker palette than what I used for Galen, yet I wanted enough similarity to provide symmetry as the novel follows the stories of both brothers. I hope you enjoy it, you can click on the images to see larger version.

Character Sketch: Galen Griffon

Here is a first look at the hero of my story. You can click on each image to see a much larger version. 

Galen Griffon is a twenty-five year old serving as a soldier in King Geoffrey's army. His father died when he was nine years old, leaving Galen and his younger brother to be raised on the family farm by their widowed mother.

Galen repeatedly earns praise for his heroic service but he's plagued by self-doubt. He feels unworthy of the attention and knows he is no true hero.

I have been doodling on character designs for Galen for a while and I think I have finally found a look that works. I have included both the black and white scan of my artwork along with the colored version that I finished in Photoshop. I did this by coloring everything in flat tones then using the Dodge and Burn tools to create gradients, highlights and shadows. The red piping around the shoulders was added in the computer, I didn't have them in my original drawing. But I liked the way the red popped out around the hem so I added it to the shoulders, as well.

Write right, Wright p2: The Business of Business

I minored in Drama at the University of Georgia. One of the things I learned in my acting classes was the idea of character business. Typically, business is whatever the characters happen to be doing in a dialogue scene to keep the actors from having to just stand there. It might consist of pouring a cup of coffee or straightening up a desk.

Character business can help bring a scene to life, grounding it in believability. I have found myself recalling this lesson as I construct scenes in my novel. I have also found that good use of business can provide insight or commentary on a character. If you are a writer, find ways to do this. A lot can be conveyed this way, perhaps saving you from long passages of description or clunky dialogue.

You should also extend character business to the overall direction and blocking of a scene (to borrow terms a film director would use). A creative juxtaposition of words and actions can do wonders in terms of heightening the dramatic tension of a scene.

I have three examples from scenes I've written this year.

For Scene A, I needed to portray the inner conflict of a character stuck in a situation for which he could no longer feel any excitement. Essentially, all I had on my notecard for the scene called for him to sit there and think about stuff. If it was going to be an interesting scene, it needed a lot of help. It came to life when I found a way to metaphorically represent the same conflict in an external way. That was the hook that kept the scene alive. At the same time it allows the reader insight to the character's attitude by the way he reacts to the external conflict.

For Scene B, I ended up writing two scenes in one. It needed to be a dialogue scene between the protagonist and a bad girl-type with whom he shouldn't have been alone. The dialogue was important to the plot but just the fact these two were alone in the same room needed to provide tension. I accomplished it completely through character business. The business throughout the scene provides information that is completely independent from the plot stuff going on in the dialogue. Each action (the proximity of the characters, the offering and refusal of a glass of wine, the posture, etc.) tells you something about the characters and, all the while, they are talking about something else entirely. In my opinion, that juxtaposition really cranked the tension of the scene way up.

Scene C started out as two different scenes and they both would have been boring. In one scene, the protagonist was to sit down over a meal and agonize internally over the idea of turning to the bad girl for help. It would end with him deciding to do it and the next scene had to show him making his way to her and asking. Wow, that would have been boring. My solution was to combine the scenes so that he is agonizing over his decision (internal dialogue) as he makes his way to her chambers (action). Hopefully, this provides a sense of tension as he needs to hurry up and make up his mind before he gets there. 

That's about it for this post. Just remember you can layer not only conflict but information through contrasting words and actions. This business of business can help bring characters and scenes to life.

Novel Update

It's been eight months since I've posted to this blog and there are multiple reasons for that. Primarily, there was some kind of weird mix-up that kept me from logging in. I was recognized as a member, but it didn't realize I had an existing blog.

But that's all behind us now. When last I wrote I was on my way to Africa last March. I did take my laptop and managed to write about 6,000 words during that trip. That included a scene that had long been in my head concerning how magic works in this particular fantasy world. The idea of magic in a Christian world was one of the main things I wanted to play with in this story, so it's safe to say various characters disagree on exactly what the rules -- and dangers -- of magic are.

I was called home early from Africa due to my father's health and it would be June before I wrote again. I knocked out a few more scenes in June and July, but I quit writing again. I didn't pick it up until late September. It's not that I lost my drive or interest. It was more of a case of getting hung up on the need to absolutely nail a scene the first time every time. I had lost my ease. I was not, as a friend put it, ignoring my inner editor.

But September rolled around and I resolved to making a big writing push through the fall and to the end of the year. I put aside distractions. I promised myself that I would not read any more novels for the rest of 2008, as I had already read 19 of them since January. I also have denied myself from renting movies. Any spare time I have, I want to spend it writing.

I did well up through early November. I actually finished writing all the scenes that I had broken down onto index cards. So what I have done in the last week or so is I have taken my plot outline back out and have broken the remaining story onto index cards. I have figured out what the scenes need to be, including notes on POV and plot point.

This was very exciting. I had 29 cards. For the first time, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just 29 more scenes to go. They don't have to be long, just interesting. And last night, I completed a scene, so I'm down to 28.

I'd love to do one scene a week. Even better if I could do two. We'll see. Life is busy, it's hard to find time. But I want to finish this thing. 

Next: Character Business

Write right, Wright p1: Dialogue over Narration

Well, I've talked this up enough that it seems like I'm going to have something huge and profound to say.  That's not really the case at all. It's just that there's a certain in pitfall in writing that has tempted me.

I've worked so hard on my plot and in weaving together all the various plotlines that now I just want to tell everybody the whole story right away.

It's sort of frustrating to know all the major story elements of all three books but  yet still be forced to sit down and flesh scenes out.

The temptation in writing the scenes is to just describe the plot to the reader. But I know that's a huge mistake. I believe the success of any story is judged by the degree to which the readers can relate to and invest in the characters. 

As I started out constructing my scenes I had to remind myself to not just use my power as omnipotent storyteller to explain what is happening. I  have to allow the characters to arrive at their decisions and actions naturally. They each need their own distinct personality, preferences and agendas.

One of the keys is to rely on the dialogue and actions of your characters to carry the reader through the story. Sounds obvious. But if you are an amateur novelist like myself who is excited by the story you've cooked up, the temptation can certainly be there to get through everything as fast as you can so that you can describe the next cool thing.

Of course, by forcing patience and allowing the characters to carry the story, the writer opens himself up to one of the greatest joys of the process. As I discussed in "Characters Can Surprise You", it's a blast to see  your characters come to life and begin dictating to you what they are going to do.

This may be my last post for a while. I leave Wednesday for three weeks in Sudan, Africa. I'm shooting a documentary over there that will detail what missionaries have accomplished for the area. So it will probably be April before I can post again. 

I've got plenty of hours in airplanes ahead of me. I'm taking my laptop and hope to knock out a few thousand words while I'm gone.

Real Life Interferes Sometimes

I had Chapter One in the bag and a pretty good chunk of Chapter Two under my belt when a couple of things happened. One, Christmas hit and I found myself drawn away from my book for a while. And two: My first case of writer's block.

I had an action sequence planned and I hadn't changed my mind about that. But what I hadn't planned on was for the antagonist to be involved. This was a case of a character showing up when I wasn't expecting it. A case of where different plotlines presented an unplanned convergence. 

I realized it was a great problem to have as it only served to improve the dramatic structure of the book. I don't think I give much away when I say the hero and the antagonist have a bit of a showdown at the end of the book. Here was an opportunity to provide a bit of symmetry  and foreshadowing. It was a chance to set up a few things that could have a payoff later.

So I stalled out for a couple of weeks as I figured out how to best approach the action so that the two main characters held all of the focus. And, by the way, action sequences can be tricky. You have to do all the fight choreography. In the movies, that's all left up to the stunt team, the screenwriter only has to say "there's a fight". It's a little tougher on a novelist.

My work schedule for January also conspired to keep me away from the book. We were up against a deadline to deliver our documentary about Christ's Resurrection.  Within three weeks in January I had to direct two different nights of pick-up shooting, provide an edit assist on a couple of different segments of the show, produce the show's opening sequence, oversee some computer animations we had farmed out and design the look and navigation of the final DVD.

I didn't do any actual writing during this time, but the story problem was always on my mind. If I had an hour with my laptop, maybe at lunch or just before bed, I would review what I had and then stare at the screen trying to imagine what would happen next. The problem was choreographing the action to focus on a character I didn't know was going to be there.

One oft-repeated piece of advice I always hear from writers is to "keep writing". I knew I needed the discipline to get something done everyday. But I'm not a full-time writer. I had a deadline to meet and a family at home. So I got pulled away for a bit, and that's a pitfall I fell into.

I did manage to get past that action sequence during the last week of January. I also spent time reviewing what I had, doing some proofing and tweaking some scenes. I finally began making real progress again in the middle of February. 

As I spent time reviewing, I discovered I had been guilty of some other pitfalls.

Next: I didn't actually get to it this time, but I really will look at the importance of dialogue and action over long descriptive passages.

Characters Can Surprise You

There seem to be two main approaches to writing. There are those that want to outline everything in advance and there are those that just start writing, letting the story lead them wherever it may go. In my case, I did heavy outlining because the story was generally already in place.

An outline is sort of like a road map. You can see where you are and you can see where you are going. You can see which route you are going to take and maybe even where some other roads cross your path several times.

But when you are writing you are actually on the road driving. You might know there's a town up ahead but you don't know what it looks like and how the people act until you get there. Or maybe there's a roadblock and you have to take a detour on one of those side roads. Unlike looking at a road map, you can look out your window and enjoy the scenery.

I'll quit stretching the analogy. What I'm trying to say is that no matter how much you have outlined, you are still going to be surprised. I've always heard writers say that characters write themselves. Or maybe they thought they were going to take the story one way until a particular character jumped up and said "No! I'm going this way!"

Guess what? I now totally understand that. It really does happen.

As I began writing, I discovered ways to involve my characters in a tighter narrative. What I mean is, there would be a scene that would involve characters A and B. As I wrote the scene, character C would show up. I wasn't expecting it, but C kind of popped up and told me that he belonged there.

This happened several times and what quickly emerged was a more cohesive throughline to the book than what I had planned.  Plotlines that were going to appear disparate at first began to flow into my keyboard much more intricately woven than I had anticipated. What a wonderful surprise that was! 

I also figured out very early that a character I introduced early could fill the role that was going to be needed at the climax of the third book.  It would have been a mistake to have a newcomer show up in the third act and play a large part in saving the day. Much better to have a well established character do that.

I'm still amazed at the phenomenon. I'm the writer of this thing. I'm holding the magic roadmap in my hand that shows me every road and small town. I guess I forgot that just because someone draws up the cartography, it doesn't mean they also populated the towns. Even though I had this all outlined, the story still has the capacity to surprise me. 

This is fun! You create a setting and a problem. You give your characters a personality trait or two and an agenda or motivation and then just let 'em loose. 

As of this writing, I'm about 27,000 words into my novel. So far, there have been two occasions where I was stuck. I knew for plot purposes I had to get from point A to point B, but I couldn't figure out how to get there. Both times a character stepped up and took care of it for me. I just came up with a scene that involved several characters with different opinions and goals and let them have it out. Thanks, guys!

It works. It really works. And that's an amazing discovery.

Next: the importance of using dialogue over descriptive passages

The Beauty of a Blank Page

A novel is an amazing thing, really. It's just a blank word document, a keyboard and your imagination. It's weird to think that if I just hit the keys in the right order long enough that I could end up with a best-selling novel.

So after all the preparation, it's a little bit of a nervous rush to actually start writing your first scene. Not only out of fear, as I've discussed, but also out of a sense of not wanting to blow it. As long as the page is blank, the possibilities are endless.

After I had finished my short story (or novella, Van!), I was over my fear. But I almost hated to mar the pristine blankness of that first page.  I didn't want to diminish the promise a blank page holds. It's like new fallen snow. It's most beautiful when it hasn't been touched.

I knew that once I got started that each word, paragraph and page I wrote would incrementally restrict the endless possibilities of the blank page.

But what finally got me started?

In the end, it was a deep desire to tell my story. I realized that the world and characters that I had come up with were as real to me as other familiar fictional settings such as Star Wars or the Marvel Universe.  Yet I was the only one who knew about it. That's when I knew I had to get this story out. I had to. It had become a need.

That's when I typed my first page.

It was during that same trip to Denver, I typed the first words in my first novel. On Tuesday, November 27th, I wrote the prologue and the beginning of the first chapter. I finished the first chapter on December 2nd. It was an interesting creative exercise to finish my prequel short story and then immediately turn right around and begin writing some of that same action...but from another character's point-of-view.

And I made some interesting discoveries in that first chapter.

Next: So much for sticking to the outline!

The First Step is the Scariest

It's September of 2007 and I'm looking for reasons not to get started writing.

I've known my characters, setting and basic plot for years. I've learned all I can about dramatic structure. I've got my outline fully developed. I even have an old laptop given to me for free with a copy of the freeware word processor from OpenOffice loaded onto it.

And I have one blank computer screen staring me in the face.

I knew what the problem was. I didn't think I had the mental muscles to craft a scene. I wasn't sure I was ready to write a novel having never practiced describing a setting or sustaining believable dialogue. Could I impart life and personality to individual characters with an economy of words? Did I have the ability to create a good rhythm and flow through my choice of words? Did I know how to let my choices be shaped by the POV of my limited third person approach?

The answer to all of those questions was "I don't know".

So I decided to do a practice run. I would first write a short story directly related to my book.

Since I knew that my novel would open up right in the middle of some action, I decided to write a prequel chapter that lead right into that action. The short story would feature a minor supporting character from the novel.

And so I did. I was sitting in a hotel room in Denver on November 25th when I finished the story, entitled The Hunter & The Fisher.  It came out to about 13,000 words, which I'm guessing will be around 40 pages once I have it formatted for a book.

It takes place directly before the opening of my novel and ends up overlapping with the first chapter. I will hold back this story and wait until after the novel is out because it works best as a true prequel not a primer. I was happy with the way it turned out but my co-workers, Sam and Tim, were good enough to voice their misgivings about certain details in the resolution. They forced me to rethink that a little bit and I appreciate that as it truly helped the story.

I'm pleased with The Hunter & The Fisher. It is planned to be published after all three of my novels. It will reveal an "untold tale", meaning it will depict events that are only referenced in the book. I also have ideas for three other "untold tales", maybe I'll get to them one day.

I wasn't as intimidated by a short story as I was a novel so I was able to get into the groove of writing. I used this story to discover my approach to building scenes and writing characters. Looking back  I spent three months writing 13,000 words that could have all gone toward my novel, but it did accomplish what I needed. I got over the fear of embarking upon the journey that would be my first novel.

Next: The First Chapter

Structure and Outline

During the summer of 2007, I spent a few weeks poking around the internet learning what I could about dramatic struture. I learned about concepts such as "Turning Points" and "Pinches". I had to look at my story and figure out where the lowest, or darkest, point for our hero was and how did I get from there to the climax.

Then as I looked over all I had planned, one thing jumped out at me. This was a big story with a fairly complicated plot. It was too much for one book. This was going to be a trilogy. So I had another challenge in terms of structure: The three books had to fit the pattern of a Three Act Play.

The first book needed to introduce all the key characters and the driving conflict. The second book had to heighten that conflict and leave our hero facing overwhelming odds. And the third book had to bring everything to a satisfying conclusion that remained true to the characters and the theme. These things need to happen while at the same providing satisfying stand-alone reading experiences in each book. 

So I got out my index cards and my outline and got to work. I pushed and pulled, expanded and contracted until I had it all mapped out. When I was done, I realized that what I had was a very straightforward, linear approach that kept its focus on the main hero the whole time.

I suppose that's one way to write a book, but it just didn't feel right to me. As I looked over my outline I could see that minor or supporting characters would make an appearance and, then much later, they'd show up again at just the right (or wrong) time. I knew how that had  happened, but the reader wasn't going to know.

So I picked a handful of key characters and I wrote down a timeline of events - or story beats - that each of those characters would go through. In this way, I arrived at about five other parallel narratives that fit around the chronology of my main story.

I stayed up WAY too late one night interspersing all the beats of all the different narratives throughout my outline, placing them in just the right spot chronologically. I had a blast doing this. When I was done, I had a blueprint for what I felt - and still believe - to be a very entertaining novel.

So I had my plan. At this point, September 2007, I knew every major scene of all three books. I had no more excuses. 

But I found myself frozen, too intimidated to sit down in front of a blank computer screen and begin crafting the first scene.

What was I waiting for?

Next: How I forced myself out of the starting gate.

The Genesis of an Idea

Like most boys, I fell in love with the Swords & Sorcery genre at an early age. Tales of knights, castles, wizards and dragons captured my imagination and never let go.

Later, as a teenager, I spent years playing Dungeons & Dragons. I'm a member of a very conservative independent baptist church and that confession may sound scandalous in light of the game's reputation of promoting the occult or teaching kids satan worshipping. Those allegations always frustrated me because I knew better. There was no way the people making such accusations had ever played the game or seen it played. The game is merely a vehicle for storytelling, there is nothing inherently evil about it. You could easily use the game to role-play scenarios similar to King Arthur's search for the Holy Grail or any of C.S. Lewis' strongly Christian-flavored Narnia books.

Then a few years ago the Lord of the Rings movies score big at the box office and a funny thing happened: conservative groups praised it for its Christian message. The irony is that Dungeons & Dragons was only invented by a bunch of "Rings" fans so that they could re-capture the spirit of that story in a game. But I didn't understand their praise for LOTR, either. Sure, it is classic Good vs Evil stuff, but it's not any more a Christian story in my eyes than Star Wars.

In short, I didn't see the Devil in D&D and I didn't see Jesus in Lord of the Rings.

Thus was born my idea for my novel. Part of me just wants to prove that you can tell good, as in "non-evil", stories in a Swords & Sorcery setting. Another part of me is fascinated that the same people who condemn Dungeons & Dragons often praise Lord of the Rings. I think there is interesting ground there to explore and that's what I'm trying to do.

What if Christianity existed in a Swords & Sorcery world alongside wizards, dragons, elves and monsters? What would people in such a world think of sorcery? How would the church react to a king whose chief advisor was suspected of being a wizard? How did Christianity even reach this world?

These were the questions I began asking in 1997 and that I pondered for years as my story slowly took shape. Just for fun I'd think the stuff over, making notes and drawing sketches. I know, I can be weird. And I was single then so I had the time. I'd bounce it off friends of mine and they helped me brainstorm. My protagonist became a flawed young soldier that finds himself torn between duty to his king and duty to his god.

It's a story of temptation, salvation, desperation, redemption and forgiveness. It's an exploration of the relationship between church and state. It's a tale of two brothers on very different paths in their lives. And it's all set against the familiar backdrop of ancient prophesies, magic swords and epic warfare.

In other words, I'm writing the story just for me! Hopefully, I'll do a good enough job with it that others will like it, too. I hope Christians can read it and enjoy it but I also want it to work for a non-Christian audience, which I really believe it will.

It will not read like a contrite Sunday School lesson. It's a Sword & Sorcery-style quest story that has Christianity in it more than it is a Christian story with some swords and sorcery in it for window dressing.

I' m tempted to say it's Lord of the Rings meets Left Behind, but it's not thematically tied to the book of Revelation. I believe it truly offers something unique, albeit in a familiar genre setting.

In conclusion, I want to give special mention to Chris Wolff, Stephen Hickman and George Little. These three guys had a tremendous influence on my story. Thanks, guys.

Welcome To Wrighter's Block

In this new blog I am going to do my best to journal my experiences, joys and frustrations as I attempt to write my first novel. Hopefully, this can be an interesting behind-the-scenes sneak at the process without giving away any story details.

Several things have conspired over the last 18 months to lead me to writing. I began working closing with a friend of mine named Sam McDavid. Sam enjoys creative writing and has a passion for language. Secondly, another friend of mine named Van Plexico wrote and published his own series of superhero novels. This was very exciting for me. Through the miracle of print-on-demand technology, one does not need a lot of money to self-publish. I read Van's books and they were fun. And the books themselves were well made.

I had a story in my head I wanted to tell but it was seeing these high-quality self-published books that gave me the needed motivation. Here was proof that, no matter how well or poor my story turned out, in the end I could have a book.

Of course, it helps that I already had a story idea. It is a plot that I've actually been developing for about ten years. The characters, places and events in the story are quite real to me. I didn't know during those ten years that I'd ever want to write a novel, but after seeing Van's books and being around Sam everyday, I realized I had a story that I had to tell. I have a need to get this story out there.

Then a funny thing happened that really pushed me to begin my novel: I got published.

I wrote a humorous superhero short story for an anthology Van was putting together. And doggone it if it didn't turn out really well. It is titled The Adventures of Captain Cook (or There's No Accounting for Taste).

"Hey," I thought, "maybe I can write."

No, I'm not a professional novelist or a student of literature. But I'm enjoying the process and, hopefully, you'll enjoy the end product. I started writing the book, the first in a trilogy, back in November of 2007. In upcoming posts, I'll try to give a general idea of what to expect, how it has gone so far and what's going to happen next.

If you want to see the book that contains my short story, click here.

I also contributed to Assembled!, an unofficial companion book to Marvel Comics' Avengers.

--David