Improved Scenes Done!

Hurray!


I finished my Sentence Lites! I can't tell you how good this feels. But at the same time, I’m itching to jump right in and start editing my manuscript. I want to take a good two week break to clear my mind. This should help to prevent burnout. (But we’ll see.)

What does this mean for the blog?


Lucky you, you don’t have to hear about my progress each week! Instead, I’ll compile lists of helpful links and tools to help you with your writing journey. I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through my readers.


The first series of links is all ready to go. It's about conflict. This is something I’ve had to focus heavily on, since conflict is the bread and butter of scenes. I hope these articles and tools help you as much as they’ve helped me.



By the way, here is the last improved scene:

Improved Scene: Answers for Protection

It took me some time, but I finally sliced my way through to another sample scene. This one went from info dump to a hostage situation. (Okay, not quite as exciting as that. Nathan keeps information hostage.)

Improved Scene: Lisa's Crush

I made a lot of progress today with my Sentence Lites. (I'm past the halfway point!)
And I edited another sample scene:

(The old sentence is at the top)

This isn't a great scene to begin with, but it's short and necessary. I'll make a note to add more suspicious activity to make it really worth it :)

My Muse knew it all along

You know that creative voice inside you? Some people call it the right-brain. Others (including myself) call it a Muse. (You know, the singing demi-gods that inspire artists?)

(It's okay if you think I’m crazy, personifying my creative side. I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.)
Anyway, I was working on my scenes, rewriting my Sentence Lites when a problem I’ve been struggling with just solved itself.

Basically, without giving too much away, my main character has issues. And those issues drive a wedge between her and Nathan. Well, in my rough draft, these issues seem to pop out from nowhere. That's a problem.
But I wasn't even thinking about this problem while I was working.

So, I’m reworking some scenes, changing around the points of view for some of them, and then I get to the scene where Rachel first starts to have problems. Guess what? She hasn’t held the point of view for several scenes. Not since before the incident that's causing her issues! So it isn’t coming out from thin air; it's been developing this whole time and we never really notice it because we’re too focused on the other characters’ problems!

My Muse is brilliant. I think she's known about this for a while now but decided not to tell me until just now.

Improved Scene: Car Crash

I got through my 17th scene today, including one of my sample sentences:


Mostly, this was just a bad scene. A lot of getting ready, talking, and traveling. When I boiled it all down to the real conflict, I realized that the scene was really just a lead-in to the next one: The Car Crash. So I shortened it, got rid of the boring stuff and used only what I needed to carry the bare minimum of the little pre-conflict into the big conflict. Here's the new card with the Sentence Lite:

The protag, antag, etc are really just my thought process as I came up with the new sentence. I'll go back and fix them later. The important part is that I have a focus for my scene when I come back to revise it.

Improved Scene: Mom, Meet Nathan

Okay, I have about ten Sentence Lites done. (There are a lot of really short scenes in Chapter 2.) One of them was a bad sentence that I posted earlier:

So as a reminder, here's the old Sentence:

And here is my new card:

Not perfect, but switching the POV definitely helped. At least there's a conflict now.

First Three Sentence Lites

I started working on revamping my scenes' sentences today. Finishing three scenes took a lot less time than I thought. If I maintain this pace I'll be done in three weeks, but I'd like to finish sooner.

I've been using Liquid Story Binder to make "note cards". Each "card" can be used to track my scenes, sentences, sequencing, and the elements that each scene should have. LSB also has some nifty tools that make the process more fun.

These actors are Colleen Dengel, XiXi Yang, and Dyllan Christopher, who I think look like Rachel, Lisa, and Nathan. Just something to make note carding more interesting.

The pictures represent the point of veiw character. If you can read these (I know it's tiny guys :( I'm sorry.), I have the scene title, the old sentence (if it's an old scene), what I've changed (if it's a new scene), the protag, antag, conflict, twist, and setting, and then the new sentence.

The process is actually fun and seeing a well-put-together sentence gives me chills :) It's exciting to see this come together.

Sample Scenes: Good and Bad, and How to Fix Them

For the past couple of days, I've been working on Lesson 8 of Think Sideways. So far, I have written a Sentence Lite describing each one of my 54 scenes (a few of which haven't been written yet). As I mentioned before, some of my scenes have everything they need.

Others have been found lacking.

So as part of my process I've decided to post some of my less-than-savory scene sentences. As I revise them, you should be able to see an improvement (I hope).
WARNING: SPOILERS. Stop reading this post if you don't want to read them!

But first, so you can see 1) what does work, 2) what I'm aiming for, and 3) that there is some hope for me as a writer, I'm going to post a couple of sentences that I'm pleased with.

Here, we have protagonist (Nathan) against the antagonist (burning wreckage) in a conflict (fighting to save Rachel's life) with a twist (Nathan is a ghost, but is somehow able to pull Rachel to safety). The setting is embedded in the antagonist: burning wreckage.

The protagonist (Rachel) against the antagonist (the shade) in conflict (an attack that causes Rachel to lose consciousness) with a twist (the shade was waiting for her).
This one isn't quite twisty enough and could use some tweaking.

So here it goes. My crappy scenes:

Okay "introduces" and "explaining" are not conflict. They are boring. There isn't an antagonist. I suppose Nathan's unique situation could be a twist, but it's not a very good one. See the fixed version here.

Again, a conversation isn't conflict. For there to be conflict in dialogue, they have to want different things or there has to be some subtext that causes conflict. The improved scene is here.

While this is great news for Lisa, there isn't much conflict. The scene needs some work and the sentence needs a LOT of work. Mostly, Rachel is suspicious of Kevin, but doesn't want to disappoint her friend. That's the conflict, but it could be better. Improved scene: here.

Learning is not conflict. Nor is a discussion. There needs to be more tension. There needs to be something at stake here. See the improved version of this scene.

I think the scene is okay, but the sentence needs reworking. The verbs aren't very strong and don't convey any tension. Here's the improved scene.

So there you have it. 5 scenes in desperate need of a makeover. Let's see what I can do.

Here are the before and after shots of my first three scenes.

Links: Organizing, Creating, and Marketing

So, here I am, twiddling my thumbs as I wait to add to my manuscript. I understand why I need a break from it before diving in again, but sometimes it's hard! So, to occupy my time, I've been searching for good resources and advice from the pros. Here's what I have so far:

The number one link I think I can ever give you is :
How to Start a Novel
Read it, explore the links, and explore the side bar for more articles. This site covers everything.

Organizing:
Plotting Under Pressure
How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method - this provides an excellent checklist that an agent (or intern at an agency) will go through to see if they should take you on as a client. Very helpful.


Creating:
One Word - a 60 second writing exercise
Deeper People: Putting Yourself into Your Characters
Pacing Scenes
How to Write the Perfect Scene
How to Finish a Novel
5 Evergreen Editing Tips - When you're done with your manuscript and think it's ready for submission, make sure you've gone over this checklist before you do.


Marketing:
Advanced Fiction Writing E-Zine
How to Query an Agent
When Reading Submissions

A Problem and a Challenging Solution

Okay, so I've got an interesting problem to deal with. I'm almost done with my first draft. I've got two very short scenes, one really long scene (the final battle!) and then another quick one to wrap it up. Only problem is, this was supposed to be a 60,000-word novel and I'm only at 32k!

A little tip for other writers: filler is bad. I don't want to use filler.

So what do I do?

Fortunately, I've already planned to go back and insert entire chapters from Nathan (my hero's) point of view. This will add depth to my love story, a new voice, maybe a little history (because he is a ghost after all), and we can see the heroine from another perspective.

(I expect the unexpected to happen when I do this. My muse likes the throw some cool stuff on the page when I do stuff like this. )

And then I'll add a romance for poor Lisa, who has desperately wanted a boyfriend since chapter 1.

I'll also rewrite some of my current scenes from his perspective and see which is better. Then, I'll go back to the beginning and add rich detail, a LOT more conflict (I've decided life's been way too easy for Rachel), and a ton of showing (vs. telling).

I should get my words in, but this is going to take a lot of planning.

First of all, when I finish the first draft I'm taking a break! Maybe two weeks. I'll work on my phantom project, maybe catch up on my reading, stuff like that. Then I'll go through what I have and write out what I'm hoping to get out of each scene. What do I want to tell the reader? How do I show it instead? What's the conflict? What could make it worse? How would EACH character (present or not) react? What are my characters seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking, doing, and saying? What do they want to hide from the other characters? What other motivation might they have?
etc...

Yeah, it's a long process, but the product that comes from it is more than worth it!
Then, I read through a hard copy of my book, writing in comments, suggestions, thoughts, and nit-picky edits. THEN I go through a soft copy and actually MAKE all those edits. (By now I'll be exhausted.)

I'd like to get all of this done by October 1st. (I know, good luck, right?) That way I'll have a full month to plan my phantom project in time for NaNoWriMo.

Think I can do it?

We'll see.

By the way, the Writing Tip of the Day is:
Never resist editing, because your writing isn't etched in stone and can always be improved for the reader.

How appropriate.