Fiction – Page 2

Pantser or Plotter?

March 17, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

In case you’re not familiar with these terms, a “pantser” is one who has no plot, but plunges in and writes–flying by the seat of his or her pants. A plotter is one who methodically plans each scene ahead of time. In truth, I think that most writers fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

I would love to claim to be one of those people who just sits down and writes with no heed to where things are going, but the truth is, I have to have a plan. I have to know what the outcome is going to be, and how I am going to get myself there.

Since the time I have to write is scratched out of an otherwise busy life, when I do sit down to write, it’s usually with a lot of forethought and consideration. I use those other moments–sorting laundry, washing dishes and walking to the market–to give my thoughts to what fictional problem I’m going to work out when I do have the time to sit down and actually write. Having some kind of a plot outline gives me food for thought for those moments of contemplation.

And now I have a new tool to help me in plotting: Scrivener. Some time last year, after a friend gave me his used MacBook Pro, I installed Scrivener and have not looked back. Of its many amazing features, I love the ability to make detailed notes on characters, setting and plot, all without sullying the beautiful blank pages of the novel itself.

In my work in progress (working title, What the Girl Knew), there are three viewpoint characters. For each one, I can make a random list of scenes on virtual index cards that can be shuffled around to rearrange the scenes in the novel. And I can color-code each index card according to its POV (point of view) character.

Here’s a screenshot of my work in progress:

Scrivener for plotting

I have blurred out the area to the left to avoid any spoilers. All the scenes tagged in red belong to my protagonist. The blue and orange scenes are for other POV characters. The scenes are wildly out of order–just as I thought of them. But enough of them are there that I am almost ready to begin the actual work of writing.

I just need to do a little more work on character first. But for that, Scrivener is equally amazing. Here is a look at the character page for the main character from my middle-grade novel, now in the revision stage:

Scrivener for character development

This character is really well-fleshed out. I have a definite handle on him. But I’m lacking a little of this yet when it comes to What the Girl Knew. A little more time hammering out the details on those characters and when I sit down to write, they will drive the story forward. With the gentle guidance of the plot details I’ve already established, I should end up in the right place.

How about you? Are you a plotter or a pantser? If you’re not a writer, which kind do you think you would be?

What’s in a Name?

March 2, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

This week, I’m naming characters. Maybe you’d like your name written into my next book? Read to the end of the post to find out how you can nominate yourself into literary history. :)

I’ve begun work on my next novel. It’s been percolating away in my head for some time now. I’d done some research into the subject matter, and thought through some of the possible scenes, and especially hashed out how I wanted the story to end. I seem to need to know that right from the start.

But first scenes often seem to drop into my head in a flash of inspiration, and this one was no different. I believe it was around 3:00 a.m. that it crashed into my brain. I was, of course, just closing my computer. I opened it back up again, cranked out the scene, and then tried to go to sleep in the glow of the words.

And amazingly, it still looked pretty good to me in the morning.

Character Names

So this week, I spent some time on names. Some authors don’t see names as all that important and go ahead and write without them, but I need to get to know my characters a little first, and a name seems like a pretty basic first ingredient. For a minor character or place name, I don’t mind throwing in a blank (I usually type ***) as I go along and come back to it later, in order to keep the words flowing, but I need to know the names of my central characters.

I usually check on the meaning of a name before I use it, and sometimes I name a character according to the meaning of his or her name. There are a couple of tools I like to use for that purpose.

A good tool is http://www.behindthename.com/. This site permits reverse look-up using the meaning of the name, but the database isn’t extensive.

The best tool I’ve found is http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/. At this site, you can:

perform a reverse lookup for meaning
check popularity of the name
discover the ethnic origin of a name or filter for it (For example, if a story was set in Finland, I could limit my search to Finnish names)
search for either boy or girl or unisex names
eliminate names that don’t pair well with a family/last name (Clark Kent, for example would be eliminated because there are two “k” sounds together at the end of the first name and beginning of the last–imagine how much further Superman might have gone if someone had just checked the baby name directory before naming him!)

Below are some screenshots from the site. The only negative for this site is there are ads which autoplay in the sidebar. Each time the server refreshes when a new option is chosen, they start over again, so they need to be paused multiple times (or mute your speakers while you view the site).

Once I have the character’s name, other parts of the personality seem easier to fleshed out.

Naming the Setting

It’s less important to me how I name places in my story. It’s not something I feel I must do before I can begin to write, for example, but I do put time into figuring out names of significant places in the story. I like to pick a real place to set the story, but call it by a fictional name. I did this in After the Snow Falls. I wrote a post last year about the inspiration for the fictional town of Point-du-Fleuve.

So how do I find fictional place names?

Well, I made Point-du-Fleuve up. I knew the setting was on a river. Fleuve means river in French, and the town was in Quebec, so that worked.

My new story is set in an Ontario town. So I Googled for a list of towns in New York state, right across the border, and found a place name that doesn’t appear on the map of Ontario.

I think I’m pretty happy with the names I’ve come up with for two of the main characters, but if you’d like to nominate your name for another character, or give me an idea for a fictional town name, please let me know by leaving your name suggestion in the comments, below.

Wordful Weekend

February 23, 2013 by Carey Jane Clark

Back in November, I began a middle-grade novel (a middle grade novel is one aimed at the “tweens” age group) with the working title Truth and the Tepawani: An Adventure in the Amazon for NaNoWriMo. I decided last-minute to take the plunge and try to write for National Novel Writing Month, and didn’t really think I’d get as far as I did. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write an entire novel in a month. The minimum word goal is 50,000 words. But this word goal is actually on the high end for a middle-grade novel, which is more at home at around 30,000 to 40,000 words (unless you’re writing fantasy).

In these posts, I hope to bring you inside my writing process and share a little of what I’ve learned of the art of writing fiction in the 10 or so years since in the midst of diapers, first teeth, nap times, and interrupted nights, I began making it a serious pursuit.

I finished NaNoWriMo 2012 at 32,905 words. I was immensely satisfied with that accomplishment–and exhausted. I decided to rest a while, and then Christmas came, and then the preparation for Chinese New Year, and–you see where this is going, right?

But last week, I picked things up again and even had a breakthrough, and I’m very close to calling the first draft of this book done. And then it will be time to revise, revise, revise.

And to start the next one. This time, another book for an adult audience.

But what’s the current book about? It’s the story of a 12-year-old boy who spends his summer vacation with his missionary cousins in the Amazon basin and makes an astonishing discovery certain to turn modern science on its head–if the evidence hadn’t mysteriously vanished.

What I Learned From NaNoWriMo

November 30, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

As midnight draws near here in China, and NaNoWriMo draws to a close, I can’t tell you how much I wanted to be able to post a “Winner” badge on my site and proclaim my completion of 50,000 words. My competitive spirit was running very high this month.

In the end, the best I can do is this, and as a consolation, I’ve reached the word-count goal for the genre of fiction I was writing: a middle-grade novel:

Click here to read Chapter One of Truth and the Tepawani, the novel I completed, thanks to NaNoWriMo.

But make no mistake, I am extremely proud of what I accomplished this month. I have no regrets whatsoever. I learned more than I could have imagined.

I don’t have to wait for the “perfect moment” or a “writing morning” to find time to write. I have to make those moments happen, and they are far more plentiful than I thought prior to this month.
I am capable of much more than I thought. Don’t laugh–and please understand that I was at a different stage in my life–I had a baby, a couple of busy toddlers, and a move to China during the writing of my last novel, but all told, it was seven years from first word to last. What I’ve written in the last month may not be publication-ready, but it isn’t trash, either. Some of it is pretty good. And I did it in a month. Wow.
An iPod is an excellent tool for shutting out distractions.
I can write 5,000 words in a day, if I’m determined enough to make it happen. One day I did just that and more.
During the second last week, when I considered giving up (the second time), I received an email in my inbox from Holly Lisle. I receive her regular newsletter. She talked about using a timer and ten-minute increments to motivate a higher word count. She uses her timer for two-hour total writing days and produces 3,600 words a day. I reasoned that I wouldn’t be able to dedicate two solid hours, but I could grab 10 minutes here and there, and possibly aim for the same results. She talked about the kinds of plot twists that could emerge when you just wrote for all you were worth and allowed your “muse” to take over. And guess what? It happened! Twice at least, some incredible plot twists emerged that I didn’t expect, even as I wrote them!
Finally, balance is important too. In the last few days, I considered pushing for four solid days and writing 5,000 words per day to finish so I could display that “Winner” button. To say I did it. But bleary-eyed late one night, fighting sniffles, I realized that my pride would have to suffer for the health of my body and my family life.

Someone asked me today if I’ll participate in NaNoWriMo again. My answer? Maybe. I learned so much, and I enjoyed the thrill of dedicating so much time to what I love to do. It was fun because I’m writing a middle-grade novel and my kids were very much interested in the story. I’m definitely grateful to my very supportive family for putting up with me during the last month!

But I plunged in last-minute without accumulating a lot of writing buddies to keep pace with and the person who nudged me toward diving in gave up around 2,000 words. I would consider doing it again if I had other friends to participate with me. What do you say? Will you join me next year?

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