NaNoWriMo - Complete!!

Well, as of this past Sunday, November 22nd, I have completed my NaNoWriMo novel. With over 50,000 words and a complete narrative arc (which, admittedly, could stand to be filled in more), I wrote a novel in less than a month.

Again.

Some lessons I've learned:

I am not a "make it up as you go along" writer. I like working from sort of outline: in this case, a set of chapter headings that told me what each chapter should be about. Even vague guidelines were better than trying to write blind, and I think this novel turned out better than my last effort. For whatever I work on next, I intend to take copious notes before I jump into the full narrative. (Which leads to the problem of never actually starting anything, of course. Selah.)

I need a thesaurus. Granted, NaNoWriMo is not about trying for brilliant prose, it's about flinging 50,000+ instances of poo at paper and seeing what sticks. But I overused certain descriptive phrases way too often for my tastes.

I need to watch out for adjectives. Actually I used these little monsters as word count boosters, so I'd say at least a third were deliberate and would die in the initial rewrite. But they were painful to write in the first place, and I'll be cutting back in the future.

I can write like a bastard when I need to. Here, go look. I had one day (off) when I wrote damn near 10,000 words, and ten days where I broke 2,000 words. I can't match Stephen King, but I can keep up with him for a bit before the psychotic episode hits.

I don't actually need to write like a bastard. Just before starting NaNoWriMo, I read a book, How To Write & Sell Your First Novel by Oscar Collier and Frances Spatz Leighton, which recommended a daily output of three double-spaced manuscript pages. This was a revelation when compared to Stephen King's recommendation, which is ten double-spaced pages (five if you're just starting out), or the NaNoWriMo recommended minimum, which is about 1,667 words a day. So what if you can't match the pace of a Maine prodigy or a bunch of over-caffeinated noveling fiends? If you wrote three double-spaced pages, you did okay. It's truly a marvelous philosophy, and I encourage it wholeheartedly for anyone who gets brain strain after reading On Writing.

--Dave

Author's Log

In addition to the final stages of the novel, I drafted six two-page character sketches for an upcoming project. I learned the technique from First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen S. Wiesner. The title is a blatant lie, but as a prewriting guide this book seems to be aces so far.

Current Reading

Just finished Summer Knight, the fourth book in the Dresden Files. Another excellent read. I'm now working on Cory Doctorow's short story collection, Overclocked.

What I Learned About Writing From Watching Glee!

Glee! is a sitcom on the Fox network that revolves around the members of a high school glee club. It is a pretty good dramedy, and I'm going to be going into some major spoilers for it here, so if you think you might be interested I'd recommend browsing to Hulu and watching at least the first two episodes before reading any further.

You back yet? Good.

Television abounds with lessons to teach the writer, both good and bad. Today I'll be talking about what a writer can learn from watching Glee!. To keep the post short, I'll be focusing on three of the show's antagonists and their relationships to the protagonists.

The Characters

Terri Schuester is the wife of Will Schuester, the show's protagonist. Terri is introduced in the first episode as an antagonist. She and Will are fairly obviously not right for each other, something which both characters are becoming aware of. Terri is terrified that Will is going to leave her, to the extent that she suffers a hysterical (false) pregnancy. Once she learns that she is not pregnant, she fears that Will will leave her as soon as he finds out, and determines to deceive him and find a substitute baby to save their marriage.

Quinn Fabray is the leader of the school's cheerleaders. She is introduced as an antagonist to Rachel Berry, a lesser protagonist who has a crush on Finn Hudson, Quinn's boyfriend. She is later revealed to be pregnant by another student, Puck, but convinces Finn that he is the father even though they have never had sex.

Sue Sylvester is the coach of the cheerleading squad and another antagonist for Will. She is determined to squash Will's glee club, in the interests of keeping the lion's share of the school's budget coming to her cheerleaders.

Lessons Learned

Give your antagonists believable motivations - No bad guy should ever be evil just for the sake of being evil, unless you're writing a philosophical story. Your antagonists should have reasons for doing what they do that are just as strong as your protagonists.

• Terri lies to Will about her pregnancy because she is terrified of losing him. All of her actions are motivated by her desire to save their marriage.


• Quinn lies to Finn about him fathering her child, and does her best to hide it, because she is terrified of losing the approval of her peers and parents. Her actions are motivated by her desire to keep her social status.


• Sue sets out to destroy the glee club because she wants to maintain the primacy of her cheerleading squad. She is motivated by her desire to succeed.

Make your antagonists sympathetic - Being able to sympathize with a bad guy lends the character extra depth. You might not want them to win (should not, in fact, want them to win, unless your protagonist is the bad guy), but being able to relate to the reasons they do the things they do adds another layer to their conflict with the protagonist.

• Terri is presented as amoral and manipulative, someone we hope that Will will ultimately leave. However, she clearly loves her husband in her own way, and her attempts to deceive him are her way of hanging on to her love. The viewer can sympathize with her, even while they hope she doesn't succeed.


• Quinn is presented in a similar fashion to Terri, but her motivations are different. She deceives Finn not out of love (she constantly attacks him), but because she believes he will be a better boyfriend and father than Puck. She acts out of self-interest alone, and the viewer finds it harder to sympathize with her. This makes Quinn a more two-dimensional character than Terri: easier to dislike, but ultimately less interesting.


• Sue is presented as an eccentric, hyper-competitive woman. She will take any action to ensure that her cheerleaders succeed, even if she has to crush other people to do so. But when not engaged in competition, she can be generous to her peers, and is capable of showing kindness even to her enemies under the right circumstances. She does not appear capable of true malice, and the viewer can relate to her as a fair competitor.

Don't force your characters to act like morons - This doesn't mean your characters can't actually be morons. It means that you should never have a character act stupidly or out of character in order to stick to your desired plot.

• Terri convinces Will that she is pregnant by wearing a fake baby bump. The viewer is asked to believe that Will has not seen his wife naked in months, has not touched her belly under her shirt, and that he can't tell the difference between padding and a human stomach. It's conceivable, but difficult to believe.


• Quinn convinces Finn that he got her pregnant by ejaculating in a hot tub. While Finn is not portrayed as intelligent, a simple Google search would be enough to prove that this is a lie. The deception irritates the viewer because it is artificially prolonged.


• In contrast, Sue constantly takes actions that should be unbelievable. However, all of her actions are in keeping with her character. The viewer accepts her eccentric actions because they are consistent with what they know about her.

Conclusion

There are other lessons one can learn from watching Glee!, and other characters that could be examined. These are simply the ones that stuck with me in the early part of the show. Feel free to comment if you disagree with anything, or think there's something else about the show that an author could take to heart.

Author's Log

Running well ahead of par in NaNoWriMo, with 40,000 words so far. I'm hoping to reach 50,000 by the end of the weekend. To my fellow month-long novelists, I wish the best of luck (and I hope you'll reciprocate!).

Current Reading

I've finished book three of the Dresden Files, and have started on book four, Summer Knight. This series really does just get better as it goes.

A Shameful Hiatus

Sorry for the lack of updates. NaNoWriMo is taking a bigger toll on my time than I expected, mostly because I've somehow stumbled into crunch mode at work, rather than the usual holiday slack-a-day festivities we get this time of year. When you've got a terrible batch of deadlines bearing down on you, spending your workday writing demonstrable crap is not smiled on.

To add to the fun, I got word back this week on three (yes three) novel pitches I sent in to a publisher. The idea (I suspect I've posted on this before) was that I would pitch three takes on a book dealing with a particular subject, and the editors would bat these around and pick the best of breed, or possibly suggest blending two of them together.

The actual result: The editors liked the heroes of one pitch, the villains of a second pitch, and the military elements of a third pitch. So my assignment will be to distill all the bits that the editors like and build a full synopsis based on whatever I come up with.

Happily, I like the heroes and the villains the editors like (and I think there's a lesson there), so getting to use them both is just great. And I was never invested enough in prewriting for any one story to feel that I have to junk anything. Now I just need to deliver five or ten pages of synopsis before I get a polite but firm reminder...

--Dave

Author's Log

Nearly 20,000 words since my last blog post, almost all of which will be murdered by the Red Pen of Doom sometime in December. Still a great level of output.

Current Reading

Dreaming in Code, by Scott Rosenberg, one of the founders of Salon.com. It's a biography or post-mortem of an attempt to develop a rival to Microsoft Outlook. There's something about software disaster documentaries that just appeals to me, mostly because they aren't happening to me!

Also, getting back into Grave Peril after a long break. Nothing against the book, I just got distracted by some others that were shorter or obligatory. Unfortunately I peeked at the back cover of the forth book in the series, which did a magnificent job of spoiling the third one in its first sentence. That's strike one, Mr. Butcher. Let's not have that happen again.

Finally, for comic book fans, the hardcover of Wolverine: Old Man Logan is out now. It's an excellent read for fans of Mark Millar's earlier work on Wolverine: Enemy of the State, as well as people who like westerns such as Unforgiven. That said, it's a very quick read once you get started, and the hardcover isn't exactly packed with extra features, so I'd encourage you to wait for the softcover edition if you're short on cash.

Scozzafava

Pulled from the headlines of today! Apologies in advance for the political talk. I've tried to resist, but it occurred to me that if I feel strongly enough to write on any subject that I had better be willing to. And frankly, I should be looking to get my blog posts together any way I can.

As reported here, moderate Republican Dierdre Scozzafava has withdrawn from the New York House race, leaving Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman as the de-facto Republican nominee.

In some respects, this is a great day for grassroots democracy. Scozzafava (who has possibly one of the greatest last names ever)was hand-picked by the 23rd district's county chairs because she was considered the most electable candidate. There was no primary and no caucus - understandably so, given that this is an unscheduled election resulting from the previous district's Congressman, John McHugh, being named Secretary of the Army.

Scozzafava's nomination angered the party's conservative base, mainly because she is pro-choice and supports equality of marriage. Doug Hoffman saw this and beat her like a gong, garnering support from high-profile Republicans like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and practically everyone except Newt Gingrich and the RNC.

In my view, seeing a third party candidate topple a candidate from one of the Big Two is cause for celebration. Every now and again I think the country needs proof that you can be something other than a Democrat or Republican and still be electable, despite the examples set by Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.

On the other hand, Hoffman's defeat of Scozzafava is another degree of swing for the GOP towards the far right end of the political spectrum. Despite the attacks against her, Scozzafava was never anything other than a moderate Republican. GOP members in New York are a different breed, Republicans who have mostly ignored the Christian Coalition and the Southern Strategy, so Scozzafava's pro-choice and equality of marriage stances were well within the tolerances of the area. Her other major sin, voting to raise taxes, was done when it was a requirement to meet budgets.

But Scozzafava was also against drug law reforms, against gun control, against labor, against benefits for multilingual police officers, against reforming knockless warrants, against foreclosure protections, and for tort reform when it came to health care. Again: moderate Republican.

That Hoffman was able to drive her out of the race in New York by abusing her social conservative bona-fides is a red flag for how much power the right-hand wing of the party has these days. It's the same thing we've been seeing with Arlen Specter abandoning the party, Michael Steele becoming a hardliner, Meghan McCain's feuds with Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, and the widespread abuse of so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) in general.

I consider myself a political moderate. The last thing I want to see is one of the main political parties in my country falling under the control of its most extreme members, but that seems to be exactly what's happening to the GOP. If we don't get more politicians on the right side of the aisle in the next few years that are willing to compromise for the greater good, then I expect the partisan divides in this country are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

--Dave

Author's Log

Completed and submitted three one-page novel pitches solicited by a publisher. I have about a month to wait until they'll get back to me, which is the perfect amount of time for me to complete a Nanonovel.

Current Reading

Just finished two of the latest books in Black Lagoon, a full-on shoot 'em up manga series by Rei Hiroe. A definite recommendation for the shonen set.

Also, if you have an interest in good political writing, check out Senator Joe McCarthy by Richard H. Rovere. It's a biography of Senator McCarthy that was written in 1959, but is still available from Amazon. Rovere injects his own opinions into the subject almost constantly, but he still manages to give an unbiased account of McCarthy's history, and I consider the book essential reading for any political pundit you care to name.

Truth Can Be Less Interesting Than Fiction

Feeling a little cheated. On Friday I had two of my wisdom teeth pulled. Here are the horror stories I got to hear in the week leading up to that:

"You'll end up spitting blood for two days/five days."

"Your face will swell up for a week/a month/a whole damn year."

"You'll go to sleep and wake up in a Giant parking lot."

The actual result? I was in and out in an hour, have barely felt any pain, and have not had any significant bleeding since yesterday. My meds aren't giving me any hallucinations, pleasant or otherwise, and I don't even remember getting a gas mask shoved into my face.

As life experiences go, the whole thing was very boring (which, compared to the horror stories, is probably a good thing). The only worthwhile part was getting to sit in a lobby that looked like it was pulled straight from The Shining. There's just something inspirational about blood-colored marble floors, which is an excellent choice for an oral surgeon's office, by the way.

Ah, well, maybe I'll mix my meds with a beer or two, see if the great Gazoo would care to impart me with some wisdom. Or else I can just get back to finishing up the pitches.

--Dave

Author's Log

Ah yes, the pitches. I'm currently standing at four possibles, each one page long, giving a fair description of a possible novel.

Pitch writing doesn't give you a big word count, but it can be a great learning experience, and I'll go ahead and recommend it for anyone writing a novel. For one thing, you'll probably have to draft a pitch eventually to sell the book, and there's no harm in getting started early (except for the possibility of an extra revision or two, of course). For another, distilling a story that runs for 100,000 words down to a single page really makes you think about what the most important parts of your story are. If you're obsessing too much over a subplot or background details, cutting your story down to the bone might be enough to get you back on track.

Current Reading

I've read a fair few books over the week worth mentioning.

Death Troopers, a Star Wars novel by Joe Schreiber, brings the terrifying menace of the undead to a galaxy far, far away. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but it's actually a very well-executed horror story that fits itself into the Star Wars universe surprisingly well. It's not a necessary read to follow the Expanded Universe canon, but if you're looking for something scary to read and don't want to wait for Stephen King's latest, you could do a lot worse.

Shamanslayer, a Warhammer novel by Nathan Long, continues the long-running story of Gotrek & Felix by setting them against a horde of Beastmen (half-men, half-animal, all evil). Some old characters from the William King books resurface, an old and nearly forgotten plotline gets resolved, and lots of carnage and mayhem occurs throughout. It's probably not a good idea to read this book if you aren't following the series, but longtime fans will find a lot to like here.

After a long delay I finished Fool Moon, the second Dresden Files book from Jim Butcher, which concluded in high style with lots of werewolf-on-werewolf action (minds out of the gutter...). I've just started in on the third book, Grave Peril, which looks set to delve into ghosts and the perils of the Nevernever. Still nothing but good things to say about this series.