Kai Rho

I was reading a science fiction paperback novel this past month, just got thru the first 7 chapters and I didn’t like the pace. The chapters were wordy and overly descriptive IMO, and the story didn’t move much. I understand that the author is just introducing the major characters in these first chapters, but it was painful for me to read.

I was reminded of another science fiction paperback novel that I read last year, that seemed to fly thru the pages with lots of action. That story moved at warp speed! It lacked flowery descriptions and internal conversations. However it allowed you to get to know the characters as you went along by virtue of their words and deeds… kinda like real life.

So which is better?

It’s a personal preference really. I’m a very analytical thinker and I can’t tolerate too much fluff. I want every piece of information imparted in a story to have relevance, either immediately or later down the road. If it doesn’t serve the characters or the story then cut it, you don’t need it.

Weeding the Garden

In January I took a break from “Tin Man” (my 2011 NaNoWriMo project) to clear my thoughts. I focused instead on cleaning up the various volumes of my “Son of War” series. It was a time to ask myself “does this serve the characters or the story?” If it didn’t, I needed to cut, prune and weed it out of the story. It’s harder to do than you would think. We writers tend to get attached to dialog, scenes, situations etc like they were our own children. I put alot of work into those sections and don’t want to see it “on the cutting room floor”. But just like weeding a garden or pruning a tree yields better results in the end, cutting the fluff yields a better flowing story.

So I’m planning to invest a few more weeks this month on “Son of War” and get it back on track. Then I can hopefully look at the details I already have and decide what to keep and what to put into cold storage for use later in another volume or another story.

Never throw anything away or delete it permanently. You might be able to use it elsewhere or down the road.

- KRR

As crazy as November was with late night writing frenzies, I’m taking it slow in December. One of the nice NaNoWriMo prizes was 50% off the Scrivener software (from Literature and Latte).  It normally sells for $40, so the 50% discount made it much more affordable for this starving writer. Also I am fortune that this software, previously available only for the MAC, was just released for Windows, which means I can use it.  Double good news!!

I already went thru the tutorial, though I did try to plow thru it on my own at first, being the tech-geek that I am. The tutorial was VERY helpful and it explained a lot of the features of the program. Granted I probably forgot most of them after using it for 10 minutes, but the tutorial and users manual are always there for me to refer to when I need to.

Write now I am transferring my story into the Scrivener program before I continue writing. I am about 60% thru the transfer and then I still have @ 20% of the story to finish writing. Using this program will help me to move around scenes and chapters easily. After only a few weeks using Scrivener I can tell you that I’ll never go back to MS Word.

With the holidays around the corner and the workload at my job picking up, I don’t anticipate being able to do much writing this month. I do expect to finish transferring my story into Scrivener and planning out the remaining chapters a little more before the end of the year.

I hope to make 2012 the year of the finished novel!

–KRR

Is there a right way and a wrong way to write? Most people have their own style or preference. Nowadays most writers use computers and word processing programs. But even they have come a long way. Having the right tools can help your story writing process, as I learned recently…

When I started writing my NaNoWriMo story this past November, I began with MS Word. I wrote a paragraph thinking out the beginning, middle and end of my story. Then I fleshed out each sentence and created a general outline with important plot points. And then I added to the outline, subsections and sub-subsections detailing where I wanted the story to go.

Of course I always kept in mind that my characters tended to hijack the plot early on so I wasn’t married to this preliminary outline. It was more like the dashed white lines on the highway. They keep you in your lane so you can get to your destination safely but they don’t prevent you from changing lanes if you wanted to.

By the time my outline was completely detailed and ready for the meat adding part (ie: dialog, narratives and actual complete sentences etc) I had a multipage 1-2k document. Unfortunately this is the part where MS Word started to piss me off big time!! As my document grew the auto-formatting gremlins would come out of the wood work and start tormenting me. Since I was still essentially in an outline form, Word would try to indent and add numbers or bullets to my entries. If I highlighted a line over here it thought I wanted to do the same elsewhere. No! Did I tell you to highlight that section? No, I didn’t. Bad MS Word, bad!

And if I tried to use the Outline View to control how much of this big bulky document I could see at one time, it would crap out on me and turn every section into the same level and thereby defeating its own purpose. It was more than this ADD-enhanced story teller could handle. Aye aye aye!!!!!!

Then the clouds parted, light streamed down from the heavens and a chorus sang in harmony “Scrivener”. Yeup, I was saved. I found the way. The write way to write. More on my Scrivener experience on my next post.

–KRR

Today I reached the 50k word target for the NaNoWriMo competition! This was my first year participating and I honestly didn’t think I had the time to dedicate to this highly intense writing tournament. But in the end I’m glad I did. I met other writers from the area and picked up some tips and techniques that have helped my writing improve.

Unfortunately, my story isn’t completed, even with 50k worth of meat on the bones. I will make my own personal goal of adding another 25k in December (at a more relaxed pace) and hopefully that should get me closer to finishing the first draft. Several other WriMos have mentioned publishing their work after they’re done writing and I have to admit to being charmed by the idea. But FIRST I have to finish the story before I can make any plans. So tonight I’ll go to bed at a more civilized hour and starting tomorrow I will start my trek toward the 75k total word count on my story “Tin Man”.

– KRR