This morning I covered only about three scenes. And I didn't write them. I summarized each one in a single short paragraph. Not a huge output for over an hour's work. For the first time I'm trying to map out my story ahead of time. I have opened a single document and I'm adding scene summaries. Each one looks something like this:
Jeff is on the case
POV: Jeff
Location: Saver district
Jeff reluctantly comes to the Saver district to examine the body. He desperately wants to avoid engagement. All he desires is to retire, mourn his wife. His sense of duty overrides this. Darren is the officer on the scene to Jeff's distaste. Darren discovers a trinket close by, jewelry preferred by some of the edge people around Brine. He seems determined that the girl wandered out of town, was killed by an edge person. Jeff is unconvinced.
I have lots of these in the file now. I cut and paste them around, add and subtract. So far it doesn't quite hang together, but I do have a sense that I'm getting to the heart of the story. The question is.. am I killing something mysterious with such a clinical process?
I can't help feeling that there's something of a stigma attached to this kind of approach. I wonder if some don't see it as a kind of cheating. Very few writers I've heard interviewed admit to detailed outlining. I'm convinced there are writers out there who outline in secret. Then later, in interview: “Well, Terry, I like to write by the seat of my pants. It's the fear that really makes it work. And the characters of course. Sometimes they just take over.”
Well that's true as far as it goes. My characters often take over. They want an easy life. They'd like to chat about the state of their feet. They fancy a sandwich. They happen to hate jobs that are co-incidentally very similar to my own. They hang out and make cups of tea, and generally avoid getting into story situations. And then, because something has to happen, I'm forced to make a bomb go off, or have a spaceship land on the roof.
Maybe I just don't have the right characters. Maybe I'm recruiting in the wrong place. I imagine a kind of slave market where you can shop for them. Buy just the right cackling antagonist from House of Baddies, or a roguish anti-hero from Han's Hunks.
So having produced a first draft of my novel NaNoWriMo style, I'm now mapping my way through the story ahead of the rewrite (which will be all but total). For some reason, though, I find letting the words flow easier than thinking about story. Especially since you can count words. It's much harder to quantify the value of a planning session. Was I actually working that hour I looked out the Starbucks window over the Lucas Arts lawns? Or was I merely day-dreaming, and periodically checking my email? A thousand words, though, that's something tangible, measurable. Even if their quality is barely quantifiable.
And then there's procrastination to consider. I've created half a dozen of character bios. I'm working on dozens of scene summaries. I haven't even started on setting descriptions. Is it possible that I'm putting off the moment that I actually write real novel-words? The more I prepare to write, the more I'm at risk of a kind of literary stage fright. With all this preparation it had better be good, I think. I had better nail the desires of each character, the heart of the setting. Then, I think, maybe I should work a little more on the bios. I mean, have I really explored the protagonists teen years? I could quite happily be coloring this stuff in a year from now.
I've limited some of this by only outlining up to the end of part one of the novel. That's the point at which everything pinches together. The moment everything changes for everyone. So I still have that pleasant feeling that anything might happen, even as I pin down every action and feeling up til then. And I can let my work on part one inform the later book.
Tomorrow I meet with my fellow workshop attendees for some mutual encouragement/commiseration. We'll see how that goes.
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