First Draft Completed, Now What?

Good evening all!

I'm back from a long, long, long hiatus from the blog, but it was for the best of reasons. I spent every day since early December working on a new project, the first draft of a story that I'm calling 'Air'. I set a weekly word goal of 7,777 words  (don't ask me why...seemed like a good a number as any), and each week I made sure that I hit or surpassed my goal.

I'm here to tell you that I've done it! I now stand at the far end of that tunnel, the four-month-long tunnel in which we spoke in front of at the time of my last post, when I said that I was going to be starting a new project soon. Do you see me leaning in from behind its stony lip? Can you make out that thing I'm waving in my hand while I grin a victorious grin? Well, I'll tell you. It's a completely-finished first draft! And it's so much more. It's 129,000 words worth of clay. There's some semblance of what it can become. I can see it even now, though to most it is still lost in the pudgy, shapeless folds that looks more like mechanically separated chicken than anything else. That's okay. I am armed with my scalpel... ready to carve something beautiful that everyone (hopefully) can enjoy. And yes...it's a bit daunting.

You see, I've written a few short stories before, two of which have gotten published in magazines. I've written the first draft of a 100k novel but it was full of dead ends and obstacles that were too mountainous for my level of experience. I (temporarily) put it aside. Some day, I'll go back to it, I swear. For now, my experience with actual editing stops with the completion of those aforementioned short stories. 5K words compared to what I'm looking at with 'Air'...big difference... a helluva big difference.

I've been doing a lot of research on different methods of editing. A lot of what I'm planning is being pulled directly from Chuck Wendig's playbook. You can find it here. It's a great and very helpful post, one every hopeful writer should read.

One of Chuck's first suggestions is to get feedback from beta readers. OK, great. But there's a problem already. I've shown up to the marathon, just shy of the gunshot that will start me barreling towards the finish line, only to realize that I left my damn running shoes at home. My story is chock full of unfinished scenes, plot holes and dialogue so far out there that a conversation between two crack whores would seem more intellectual. Some characters have mullets and drug problems in scene 10, but then are corporate CEOs with sexy last names by scene 20. I won't even go into all the time paradoxes and location inconsistencies.

So what am I to do? I can't send this slosh of horse manure to beta readers. It'll make their head explode, and that won't help me. I think I have a plan figured out. Before I'm ready for beta readers, I will take care of the following:

• Characters: For each of the major and minor characters, create a character-detail page. This page will have descriptive information, personality information, history, notes, hobbies, mannerisms, etc. Create a keyword out of the character's full name and link it to this detail page. (I use Scrivener, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Click here for an idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to keywords. Then search all scenes for that character. If the character has a relevant presence in a scene, attach the character's keyword to the scene. After visiting all of those scenes, you'll not only have a comprehensive list of all scenes in which this character participates, you'll also have the description page instantly available to make sure all the character info jives across all the scenes. I'll then do this for all the characters...well...all the characters that deserve it.
• Timeline: Create a timeline on a separate page that has all the major and the more important minor events that take place in the story. Also include the ages of the participating characters when these events occurred. Shuffle the scenes around to the proper order based off the timeline (Again...Scrivener to the rescue. One of the beauties of Scrivener is the ability to easily move scenes around).
• Marking Plots/Subplots: This goes hand in hand with the timeline bullet. Just as I created keywords for the characters, create keywords for the plots/subplots and attach them to the scenes as well. The beauty here is that if I want to navigate a particular plot from beginning to end to see how it flows, I can do a search for that plot's keyword and be shown only the scenes that have that keyword attached. Awesomeness to the nth degree!
• Places: Create a keyword for all the relevant places that pop up more than once in the story and attach it to the scenes where the location is mentioned. Also create a location-description page if necessary and attach the keyword there as well. Just like for the characters, what we have is an easy way to find all the relevant scenes and make sure the descriptions all jive. 

I think that after I complete these things, the draft will be ready to see the light of day... at least to a select few beta readers. At that point, I'd love to share how the process worked (or not). Give me a two weeks or so...I'll be back

Thanks for reading!

--Tim

Unveiling the Hero

After countless drafts, I am comfortable with sending my hero out into the ether, just to introduce him to you (if only for a quick hello).  His name is Garridan Beastu, and though he doesn't know it yet, great things are in store for him, if he can overcome the challenges. He is the main character of my novel, "The Sorcerer's Paragon", which is currently undergoing its second draft.

This scene is my favorite so far. To me, it captures the mood just as I wanted it to. In it, Garridan is attending the Harvest Promise Festival with his sister, Carling. Unbeknownst to him, his world is less than a few hours from unraveling.

**


Quick bursts of green, blue and pink skyfire lit up the night and rained down upon the clearing in brilliant, spiny fingers. Each one thudded powerfully against Garridan’s body, quivering his insides to jelly and causing Carling, who was perched mightily upon his shoulders, to tense up around his neck as if her life depended on it. He could barely hear her laughter over the booms.

The clearing had been thriving with people ever since late afternoon, when the Harvest Promise Festival began. Tents, produce tables, makeshift spits and game booths dotted the land but were all abandoned when the skyfire started.

Garridan looked around at his fellow villagers. Everyone was standing shoulder to shoulder in awe and silence with their eyes stationed at the heavens, their faces awash with the colors dictated from above.

Carling squeezed him tightly as another one sounded over the land, and he looked up to catch its aftermath. This one seemed to be directly above them. Blue sparks swam down from the sky and dissolved into nothing as they neared. For a moment, Garridan pretended that there was no one else in the world but he and his sister. The open night sky filled his eyes, and the trees wrapped around his periphery. Beyond the veil of thin smoke shone the stars and an elegant moon whose light would cast a calm brilliance over the land if not for the constant bombardment of skyfire.

The perfect end to a perfect day, he thought.

The festival was truly alive and shy to not one of the senses. Even from the very beginning, when he and Carling were still playing their own games, he could feel its energy creeping in. It laced the crisp air, riding on the sounds of woodwind music, dressed with the thump of deep drums that brought the villagers together in dance. It set the tempo for the rest of the evening. Carling, more than once, caught Garridan eyeing the more attractive girls as the music rippled through them, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“So you like dancing?” she laughed as she grabbed his arm and parodied the older girls.

It wasn’t long before the scent of food rivaled the music for rights to the breeze. Roasted ducks and chickens sizzled and snapped from their spits and set free an aroma that made his mouth water. It blended with the smells of fresh made candies and baked goods that lingered on still, even after the skyfire’s sour smoke settled over them.

Carling’s legs squeezed his shoulders again, returning him to the moment. That’s when he saw him, past the wide gap of the clearing, beyond the heavy sprinkle of villagers that could look nowhere but up. The man dressed in black, the outsider. In a fevered pace, the dark figure was skirting the forest, and though masked by night and only given up by the thick foliage in slivers, Garridan could sense his urgency.

Garridan swung his eyes over the crowd, careful not to move his body, careful not to garner Carling's attention. No one else seemed to notice the man just as the man didn’t seem to notice anything at all. He simply continued on, dodging brush and outstepping the clutches of the forest floor.

Suddenly, as he was about to leave Garridan’s periphery, the man charged into the forest. Another boom of skyfire swallowed the land in pink hues, but Garridan barely took notice. Instead, his eyes were pinned to the forest’s threshold, waiting for something else, anything else.

Then it happened, though the timing was such that yellow skyfire took all the praise and no one else but Garridan saw it. Pure light pulsed from within the trees, near where the outsider pushed through just moments ago...one succinct, subtle blast. For as short-lived as it was, the light grabbed an old piece of Garridan’s soul and wouldn’t shake loose. He knew what brought the light. His father had spoken of it with such vigor after he went mad.

“Magic,” he gasped.

**

The Walking Dead and Complex Characters

Today I was thinking about The Walking Dead series. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because there's a lack of things on to watch now that all of the reality shows my wife and I watch are over for the year, and it's been a while since I saw a zombie's brain get splattered into a red, gooey mist behind him/her/it.

I really enjoyed that show, not because of the zombies or the special effects (though they were both bad ass) but because of the characters in Rick's group. They each came with their own stories, their own flaws, their own beliefs. Let's face it...a zombie flick is a zombie flick. Don't let them bite you, shoot them in the head and it will all be okay. There has to be something special to pull me in, and with this show, it was the constant interaction between the characters that did it. It was how they dealt with the loss of the only society familiar to them. Here they are, their families dead, their lives up heaved, the game changed forever.  Yet they manage to carry on and work together in order to survive in a world where they are the pray.

Without a doubt, my favorite character was Shane. Yep, Shane...the one who slept with his best friend's wife and tried to steal his family, the one who sacrificed Otis to keep his own skin from becoming zombie fodder, the one who tried to kill our hero Rick. Yes, he was an ass...no doubt. But more than that, he was a very complicated character. I could never justly place him in either the evil villain or good guy category.

Everything he did, no matter how much we despised him for his actions, could have been rooted with just cause. The intriguing thing is that we will never know. Before leaving Rick's hospital room, he blocked the entrance so the zombies couldn't get in...a gesture of someone who clearly means to protect his friend the best he can in that moment. At the same time, he beds Rick's wife and takes on the role of husband and father. But if he truly believed Rick to be dead...is that such a bad thing? Only Shane knows his true intentions.

He volunteered to go with Otis to the high school to get the life-saving supplies to save Rick's son. He didn't have to, but he cared enough for Carl, Lori (and even Rick) to go. If Shane didn't kill Otis, both Shane AND Otis would have surely met their end, and without the supplies Carl would have probably met his too.

Throughout his time on the farm, it seemed that his goal was to protect the group and especially Rick's family. Yes, his ways were often crass and/or inhumane, but he felt the situations that faced them deserved such cruelty. He truly believed Rick's methods were inferior, and that they put the group at risk. A lot of times, he seemed to be right. For example, if he didn't kill the zombies in the barn, they could have escaped and infected the group, and zombie-Sophia, the missing little girl who they were searching for for the entire season may never have been found. Shane was one of my favorite riddles to try to solve every episode.

As I said before, my favorite part of writing is fleshing out these types of characters, giving them the ball and having them run with it in a pattern that only they understand. Maybe they will get to the end zone...maybe they won't. Regardless, it is one hell of an experience trying to get them there, as I hope it is for the reader to bear witness.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading!


- Tim

Character Development

I think one of my favorite parts of writing is character development. Before I start writing anything, I have a clear picture of my characters in my mind and a decent idea of where they are headed throughout the story.

What always ends up happening is that they surprise me! Through the dialogue and their actions...they almost write their own story. It's as if they really have their own personality and no matter what I have in store for them, they'll take it on in their own way. More than a few times, I try to make a character do something, and I can't make it happen. I can write it a million different ways, but it never fits because the characters have a say.

A good example is from my short story "The Death Bump". The main character, Justin, was meant to just be a regular kid with amplified problems...problems that were heavy enough to make him want to end his life. He's also a kid that couldn't stand his family, including his sister...at least that's how I originally planned it. His little sister Rosie wasn't supposed to play an important role in changing his mindset within the story. But somehow his love for her forced its way into the plot and drove his actions accordingly. I didn't initially write the story that way, but once I gave into it...everything fit and fell into place like it couldn't nor shouldn't be written any other way.

The same type of thing is happening time and time again in my novel, and it adds to the excitement of writing it. Though I know the story's final destination, my characters are telling me how I'm to get there. Neat stuff!