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.