Tag: goals

The Evolving Storyline

What do you do when you set out to write a story and suddenly it is no longer the story you set out to write?

The evolving story, as I like to call it, happens to me quite frequently. When I wrote my story “The 50 Deaths of Annabelle Joy” there was clearly my heroine plagued by the affections of the villainous Grim Reaper. I knew she would hate him the entire time, be repulsed by his affection for her, and fight to get away from him every day of her life. My original plan had Annabelle growing up, marrying, and giving birth to a daughter. As Annabelle’s daughter grew up, Death would begin to shift his interest from Annabelle to her daughter. When Annabelle learns Death intends to release her and to begin courting her daughter, Annabelle would agree to become his bride. That WAS my plan, but after I started writing it, the story evolved into something entirely different.

I am the author who becomes more acquainted with my characters as I write my story, I let my characters tell me the story and I write it. My last post I talked about character interviews, getting to know you character as the/she grows during the story. The interview was especially important in my book referenced above. As I wrote and interviewed my antagonist, I began to see the story from his perspective and that he was not, in fact, a ‘bad guy’ but a victim of circumstance.

The evolution of a story is not always as dramatic as it had been in my case, it could be something small like an unexpected ally or perhaps a game changer of finding someone else is the true villain. Allowing for evolution is partly why I do not attempt to outline my entire book, because I know the plan will likely change. As I write I find favorite characters die, while some deaths turn out to be only a near-death. I’ve had bad guys soften their hearts to become a hero and I have had strong alliances turn out to be a front, none of which I planned from the beginning.

People have asked me, ‘How did you not know your character would do that? You’re writing the story.’ Yes, I am writing the story, but I write what I see as I see it. 

All I would like to say is you should not plan your book so stringently you do not allow for things to change. We have a vision for our books as we set out to write them, but sometimes what comes from the evolution is so much better than anything we could have planned.

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan. John C. Maxwell

I would love to hear of a time from you when you wrote a story that turned out differently from what you had planned.

Getting the Ball Rolling Again

I do apologize for being MIA since the holidays. The truth is, I’ve written very little. I did work on refining my book from NaNoWriMo and I actually went for it and had it published. It is imperfect, but I’m okay with that. The mistakes are mine. I whole-heartedly love the story I came up with and if people want to criticize the occasional missed letter or duplicate word, then that is their prerogative. If someone is looking for a new story to enjoy, then mine could be a fine addition to their bookshelf.

I’ve been dealing with a lack of drive lately. I think in part it is due to my pregnancy, I find that most days I barely have the energy to move around the house. The rest, I’m not sure. I’ve always been able to visualize my story, hear my characters’ conversations before I write them, but for a while there was nothing. I would try to imagine a scene, and I wouldn’t be able to do it. My story that I’m currently working on is very important to me, and I have been writing it for years. In February, I finally found the perfect way to write my opening chapters. Chapter 1 and 2 I had no problem with, but 3 was when I lost my vision. I am happy to say that it has finally begun coming back. I see where the characters are meant to go.

I’m not participating in camp NaNoWriMo, although, I wish I would have made that commitment. I did however come up with a new concept for a story. I had a very vivid dream a couple weeks ago, and I knew this would be a new story for me. It is different then what I’ve written in the past, but it will still be centered around a female heroine. I’m excited about where this story could go. Writing a story off a dream isn’t always easy, as I’m sure you’re aware, the moment you wake up you forget much of what you dreamt. The story is full of plot holes and things that were never explained, but I’ve been able to begin developing a story around anyways.

I hope you’ll follow me once again as I continue my journey to becoming a great writer.

 

For those who are interested, my book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the%2050%20deaths%20of%20annabelle%20joy

If you would be so kind to leave a review of my work, I would be happy to do the same in turn for you.

 

– Christina

5 Chapters in 3 days…

What is the most you have ever written in a day? How about two? Three?

I have written about 13,000 over the past 3 days. My mind is blown! I don’t say that to brag, I say that because personally… I didn’t know I was capable of something like that. This is what has impressed me the most about my participation in NaNoWriMo. I have been setting the bar too low for myself, and it is going to stop.

Before NaNo, I was proud of myself just for writing over 1,000 words in 2 to about 2.5 hours. I thought I was doing well, it made it easy for me to determine a rough estimate of my completion dates, and I was happy. Since I began NaNo, I consistently write about 2,500 words in under 2 hours. Over the past 2 days, I gave myself 2 separate writing spurts to account for 5,000 words a day.

What has attributed to my sudden ability to write more in the same amount of time? I believe that I am capable of producing more now because of NaNoWriMo’s tight deadline. I have known from the very beginning that my book was due at midnight on November 30th, so I planned accordingly. I wanted to give myself some buffer time and also a chance to edit before the deadline, so my goal became one 2,500 word chapter per day. I thought that I would have to set aside time to write twice per day to achieve this goal, but I was so amped for the challenge that it wasn’t necessary.

My recommendation to you is that if you find yourself not producing as much work as you would like, raise your bar! It’s so easy to keep pushing back the due date, but take a chance, challenge yourself and push up your due date. Sometimes we need a little fire to kick everything back into gear. Make it fun, too. I think for my next book, I’ll set my deadline and I’ll bet a nice dinner (paid for or cooked by me) to my husband if I don’t achieve my goal. 

Today I am just on a high from what I’ve accomplished. I have literally been dancing around my house in celebration. Tomorrow I write the final chapter of my book, and you will hear me shout that I’ve won NaNoWriMo 2013.

Take care everyone, I’m off to go blow everyone’s mind in class with my presentation now.

Post NaNoWriMo write-a-thon and Veteran’s Day

First things first. I promised an update about how Saturday’s write-a-thon went. I did not achieve as much as I hoped I would. I really thought in 4 hours I would be able to hit 3 chapters. Unfortunately, since I don’t usually write in a busy coffee shop, I found myself distracted by unimportant things… things I usually don’t worry about. I thought that the chair was uncomfortable, I thought about if I should take my laptop with me if I wanted to order food and a drink. I thought the jazz music was too loud and ultimately had to throw in my earplugs and listen to my IPod… but I normally to write to music. 

Once I finally got settled to begin writing I got 2 sentences in and got stuck. When I had been setting up, I quickly changed my chapter guide because it no longer follow the path I was taking for my book and I didn’t know what to write. I took me a little while to get words on paper but slowly ideas started flowing, page by page, the chapter was finally getting written. I took me over two hours for that first chapter. The second chapter I wrote was a little bit easier, but I took a break to order lunch and then another short break to eat my lunch. I finished the second chapter with about 7 minutes to spare from my 4-hour pledge. So, I completed two chapters and wrote just over 5,500 words. I had hoped to write more, but I am satisfied with what I achieved.

What’s the most you’ve ever written in a single sitting?

I know the point of the write-a-thon was to write continuously for the entire day, but my husband had planned a party at out house beginning in the early afternoon, so after leaving the coffee shop, I was done writing for the day. I did write another full chapter yesterday though… I’m only 2000 words shy of being 1/2 way done and that is very exciting. So far, if I keep writing like I am, it is projected I will finish my novel on November 22. That will leave me over a week to edit and re-write anything. I’m astounded by well my first NaNo is going!

And now: Happy Veteran’s Day to all those who have served and are currently serving.

I am a Veteran as well… I served 6 years active duty in the Navy and deployed twice: once to the Philippines and once to Afghanistan. I know a lot of Veteran’s share my sentiment, so I’ll share that with you now. I have a hard time accepting thanks from people. I go to places like Sea World and on a Carnival cruise and they want the military members past and present to stand up so we can be acknowledged and thanked. Most times I would rather stay seated and clap along with everyone else. To me, I haven’t done anything worthy of being thanked. I was really great at my job, but that is all my service was to me: a job.

When I was 18, my Dad gave me to options. I could go to college or I could join the military, but I wasn’t staying home. I didn’t get into the college I wanted and I had already participated in 4 years of Naval Junior Reserve Office Trains Corps program at my high school, so joining the Navy made sense. I was in Intel, meaning that I was a glorified Google searcher and I made A LOT of powerpoint presentations. It was my job to keep the Commanding Officer and staff updated on every threat to our battalion or give them the specifics of an area we were traveling to. I had a desk job, that is all. I didn’t drive on the roads rigged with explosives and I didn’t shoot at things. Yes, my desk was sometimes in a war zone and sometimes I had to hide out in a bunker while our base was threatened with rockets, but nothing bad happened to me on deployments. My Commanding Officer and staff were always pleased with my work ethic and sometimes they said the safety of our battalion (no casualties) was in part thanks to what I did. But I just can’t see it that way.

Looking at pictures of me with a rifle slung across my back just seems strange. I was definitely not one of those girls that liked to shoot. I am in the Navy Reserves now, but I still consider myself to be a civilian. I am proud of the work I did in the Navy, I just don’t think it is deserving of thanks. If you look through my photos of deployment you would see people having a good time, and that is all I really remember, I don’t dwell on the bad. Here is my Afghanistan: Sundays we played Volleyball and went shopping at the boardwalk, for Christmas I decorated my room and my workspace, one night Carrabas and Outback cooked up restaurant quality food and it was AMAZING! I remember the night it flooded and me and my roommate had to jump over small rivers to get out laundry, but it was too flooded to go get dinner. I remember countless hours of watching TV shows on my laptop and being excited when we got satellite TV in our room. My favorite night was our over the hump party. We had a DJ come and play us music, and we danced and sang on the back of one of the trucks. I had fun in Afghanistan, though I’m sure you never hear those stories…

I don’t mean any disrespect to those that did have a hard deployment and suffer from it’s effects, you are the ones in my mind who deserve all the thanks. I was lucky, and I know that, and again that is why I have a hard time hearing the thanks.

For those of you who still wish to express me thanks, YOU’RE WELCOME, I’m just a girl doing a job to the best of my ability and I appreciate that you appreciate what we (the military) are doing.

 

-Christina 

And the story evolves

The problem with taking a concept to a chapter guide in a matter of hours is you don’t allow yourself enough to get to know the characters. At least that is what is happening to me with NaNoWriMo (nano). I needed some sort of guideline to help towards the finish line of this adventure, and so before the competition began I spat the chapter guideline.

I mentioned it before and now I will say it again: A chapter guide is great tool to assist you in writing your story, but you should not stick to it 100% My story has evolved. It was just a baby concept in the beginning. The idea is there is a girl who is so beautiful that Death (the Grim Reaper) had fallen in love with her. Death kill’s the girl quite frequently to spend time with her. Now when I wrote my chapter guide, I assumed that the girl would be extremely resistant to all of Death’s advances all the way until the end. I was wrong.

I have gotten to know more about my Death character, who I have named Renn, and I quite like him. Renn is a gentleman of all eras and he is very kind to the girl, Annabelle Joy. Death is lonely, he lives in Limbo and all he does for all eternity is reap souls. Annabelle is the only person in all of eternity that brings him happiness. 

Because Death is now a more likable character, my main girl, Annabelle is able to see him in some human light and she can develop different emotions about him. I now know that she is going to go through phases on how much she trusts Death, whether she believes she could love him, why she must hate Death, and why she doesn’t want to stay in Limbo with Death. My story was originally a three point story with some fluff holding it together, but now it has real emotions behind it.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how my story turns out. The title is “The 50 Deaths of Annabelle Joy”. I’m sure I’ll share a chapter or two on here once it is complete.

Enjoy your Friday!

1/5 Completion!

I’m titling today’s post in celebration of achieving my first NaNoWriMo victory. My Dad was teasing my excited facebook post about being 1/5 done with my book. The only reason I am celebrating by calling it 1/5 complete is because today achieved 10,000+ of 50,000 words required to “win” Nano. I don’t think I’ll be celebrating 2/5s and 3/5s, I probably won’t comment about my word count again until I reach the 1/2 way point.

Saturday is the write-a-thon… so basically I pledge to write for either 1 hour, 2 hours, or 8 hours. Don’t ask me why there is nothing in between 2 and 8 hours, I really don’t know. Honestly I think I’m going to pledge for 4 straight hours of writing. My computer and I have a love/hate relationship… especially with the keyboard tray which digs into my wrists as I type. So if you have any words of encouragement as I strive to kill myself with long hours of consistent writing, I would love to hear them. Fear not, I will let you know of my success and how much I was able to accomplish in said time.

I’m enjoying where my story is heading, though I fear that I may be repeating myself a lot… but that will be discovered during the editing phase. I am tired, and could really use a break, but I am committed to this journey with Nano. I read an inspiring post from a fellow Nano competitor who joined Nano in its 2nd year, she actually committed to the 50,000 word count in a 10 day period, and she achieved it! This I think is something I may try for in the future. I could accomplish so much more if I continued to push myself.

I’m looking forward to my next Nano celebration, but I’m sure I’ll be venting my frustrations before then.

 

Have a wonderful night!

Writing the unplanned

Writing the unplanned.

 

The other day as I was giving myself a mini celebration for almost reaching my goal and deadline for my book, I noticed an error in my chapter guideline. The portion I had slated for my final chapter, which keep in mind should be about 3000 words, was honestly about a paragraph’s worth of material. I was 3 chapters from the end when I realized this and had to figure out what to do. So I knew that had to combine the material chapters 39 and 40. What I was left with was an empty chapter.

 

Why am I so stuck on my book being 40 chapters? I don’t know I read somewhere once that a fantasy novel should be about 40 chapters and about 120,000 words, so I made that my goal. What am I doing about the empty chapter? Well that is what I wanted to talk about today. Writing what you never intended to write.

 

The way I had my story originally outlined, I did not feel there was anything that I had left unaddressed, however, I looked at where I could elaborate instead. For my story in particular, chapter 38 happened to be the ending of a war and chapter 39 was intended to be the coronation ceremony of the Queen. I decided to fill that space, since the coronation became chapter 40, by elaborating on the emotions following the war.

 

Now that I have completed that portion, I see a lot of content that many would say should be cut from the final product, but I also value in some of what is there. I believe that when I go back and edit/re-write other chapters will grow and split and the missing chapter will be something else all together, but at least I have more material to work with.

 

I think it is best to avoid large gaps in writing if at all possible. I would say the best way to prevent this is pay attention to your chapter guideline, storyboard, or whatever you use as an outline for your writing. My error could have been spotted early on, but I was only looking at my outline chapter by chapter. So go back every few chapters and look at your guideline as a whole. Your story will likely change as you write it so you may need to revisit your layout and shift things.

 

Tomorrow is D-Day, deadline day, celebration day, more importantly my day of victory. I’ll be finishing up my novel tomorrow morning and I look forward to sharing my victory with you.

 

 

Let your story do the writing

I am an advocate of planning a story out. I may not be as detailed as some authors who can detail everything that happens on each page… but I do know what are the instances that pull my story together. That being said, as I mentioned in my first post, my story is now is almost unrecognizable when compared to the original story I was writing in high school. Honestly, I have the proof in paper form!

To me, what is exciting about writing is letting your characters show you what is happening. Countless times I have told my husband with great excitement “I finally know why this happens!” or “I just found out that this is going to happen.” It is quite exciting. Some people give me strange looks and say “You’re the writer, how do you not know what is going to happen?” It is simple, I don’t. I hope that I never tie myself down with a guideline so strict that my creativity cannot leak through, it far too important.

In high school, I can easily say I was not one of the popular kids…. but everyone  knew that I was a writer. My characters live and breathe in my mind. I was then and am still now actively plagued by the daily lives of my characters, most of which would never make it into my story, but it is important to know them on a personal level. Sometimes my friends, co-workers, my husband will catch me pouting or looking angry as I stare off into the distance and I have to explain that the characters are having  an argument, or I just discovered that someone is going to die. I enjoy the experience, even if others find it strange.

If I did not allow my characters to sometimes take over my thoughts I can promise you that I would have no clue that not only will there be a 2nd book, there will be a 3rd, and even more recently I discovered there will be a 4th. I always hoped there would be a sequel, but I could not decide how I wanted my story to end. Some versions of the ending I know would have upset my readers. Now that I know the storyline of the 2nd book, I know the proper ending for my first. I came up with the idea for my next book sitting in the car, a new song came on the radio,  “Lights” by Ellie Goulding. There was one line that struck me “the Queen has been overthrown.” That line rocked my world and spun many many ideas running amuck in mind and suddenly I knew that one of my characters was that actual villain. My story already had a villain, but from that song I learned who was the even bigger threat to my main characters.

I wanted to talk about this today because as I summing another chapter, two of my characters were able to have a touching moment that I had not originally planned. Looking back, I can’t believe that I almost missed this opportunity and I think it will give the readers a better sense of closure for the affected character. This little detour took no more than 1/2 page, but I know that it has improved the ending of my book.

So to those of you who read my little blog… I would like to encourage you to actively give in to your characters and let them help you develop your storyline, you may surprised what you come up with.

I hope you’re having a great Monday, even if its is cold and cloudy where you are, it is still only 4 days until Friday.

I’ll have another post for you tomorrow, good day!

Just catching up…

I normally refrain from writing on the weekends, this is simply because I think we all need time to relax. I once read a book on how to write a book within 30 days and one thing that I read has stuck with me ever since. “Don’t force your writing.” Often times I think people have a goal in mind and they don’t want to stop until they achieve that goal, which is fine… Sometimes though you can tell that you’re just writing non-sense and you know when it comes time to edit, most of it is going to get cut or re-written. So I try now not to force the words, the only exception to this is when I’m at a bit of a roadblock. I have a lot of signposts for my book, the chapter titles and also little things that I’d like to happen within the chapter, sometimes though, I don’t give a section enough detail or the scene doesn’t take as long as I thought it might. I can’t just start a new chapter so I have to continue that scene and sometimes I have to force that a little bit. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up scrapping it later, but the point is that I still got to my next chapter or main point and didn’t just sit there stuck in the current chapter.

I suppose you could call me old-fashioned when it comes to writing. I actually prefer writing with pen and paper vice typing on the computer. I hate typing, honestly. I bought some dictation software to assist me in moving my story from my notebooks to my laptop, but right now, after wiping my computer, the program won’t reinstall. So today I will be hand typing the last few entries from my notebook. This was how I started writing. I wrote all kinds of stories beginning in middle school. I would write every chance I had like lunch break, 3 mins before class began, 10 mins before class ended. Just whenever I could. I don’t have those same habits now, but I do still prefer writing in my 70 page, college ruled, spiral notebooks.

Tomorrow begins my final 4 days to write my final 3 chapters. It’s a tight deadline, but I know that I will make it! After that though, I have to start my prep for my NaNoWriMo story. I have no idea what the layout for the story even will be, its only a concept at this point, and my 30 day 50,000 word journey for that book begins on Friday!

For those of you who read this, I hope you’re having a wonderful day! 

More for tomorrow now…