“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story,
but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le Carré
I decided to just put it aside for a bit, and study structure. I bought Lani's structure lecture, and I've done all my homework. I'm listening to both the Storywonk podcasts (author Lani Diane Rich and her husband talking about what makes for good storytelling) and the Popcorn Dialogues (Lani and author Jennifer Crusie analyzing films for good storytelling.) I'm watching more of the movies watched on Popcorn Dialogues, and applying the Lani structure to them. Bla bla bla analyze analyze analyze.
I'm also reading a couple books on writing, including my latest fave: The Modern Library's Writer's Workshop, written by a guy ran Columbia U's creative writing program. In his section on revision he has some interesting advice:Write out a summary of your story. And then keep writing out other summaries, changing the way it's told: "Change the beginning, change the ending, shift points of view and perspectives. Keep each summary short [not more than 3000 words] and try never to devote more than a day's work to any one of them. ...you are testing the possibilities. ...When you are fully satisfied, you will have a map for your second draft."
So that's kind of what I've been doing. Tweaking something, and then trying to retell the story, see if it works better or worse.
He also advises complete rewrites when making new drafts, which another writing teacher advised in another very good book: A Passion for Narrative. This latter guy said that among the students whose work was published or won awards/contests, they were more often the rewriters. I've always just worked over the first draft, albeit several times. But this time my second draft will be a complete rewrite, and I think that's why I wrote so many words in May. There's an expression my brother shared with me: "Write for the trash can." When you know the first draft is only the primordial soup from which your story will crawl, it doesn't have to be neat, it can be experimental, you can shift POVs, you can cut a character and not go back to erase him, you can just write and let the ideas come at you. You can let your inner pantser pants.
Anyway, I'm happy with my (not even finished!) trash can draft. But now I've got to figure out what's gonna crawl out of it.
8 comments:
I like all of this. The summary stuff. The complete rewrite idea. All of it. Maybe it's what I need.
Jenny says she doesn't so much write as she rewrites.
Van Gogh painted the sunflowers 99 times and the 99th canvas is his masterpiece. Hope I don't have to do that many drafts of my novel.
99 times! Well... that's hard core. :-)
Ooh I love having lots of writing friends now, to chat about these things with!
These are great thoughts - I like the idea of the summary and the idea of seeing what comes from the primordial soup of a first draft.
Very nice.
this makes sense to me. I'm at over 94K words on my novel's first draft and not quite finished. I think only the skeleton and a couple of scenes will survive.
I have a sign on my wall, 'Write a bad novel first - then you have something to work with'.
I think this is the Writers First Rule. Right up there with, 'You can't edit a blank page'.
Congrats on your draft ... now the fun really begins!
Just going out to trsf a rescue dog between flights at the airport. Your narrative book is waiting for me on the hold shelf at the library so I'll pick it up and you'll have to fit it in between episodes of The Voice tonight. Dammit! Life is too short for all of this. lol
Writers First Rule., 'You can't edit a blank page'.
Love it!
@Judie - I'll let you know if the rewriting-the-story thing, you know, works. !
@Skye - Holy word count Batgirl! Looking forward to hear what comes of your soup.
@widders - Yep--it ain't a book if it just lives in your head.
@CiCi - Thanks for picking it up for moi!
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