The Seed Idea

When you are writing something - a novel, a short story, a poem; even a paper for school, you have to have an idea. I tend to refer to them as a seed idea, as that is basically what they are. They start out as a tiny idea, and then, as you work with them more and more, you start to discover that they are actually more than they seem. They start to sprout into new ideas; sub-plots and, sometimes, you even mix two or more seed ideas together to make an entirely new, exciting plot. You develop it, and brainstorm ideas for it, discovering what it was actually meant to be in the first place. After a while, you start to find that you have discovered an entire idea for a book - and you begin to outline a bit, creating your own magical story; arranging all of the elements into a full, developed plan. That's the bud. After a little longer of simply watching the "plant" grow, you start to work on it. You write the actual story, using the outline "bud" as your blueprint. When the first draft is completed, that is the bloom.

But, as often happens with flowers, the first bloom is not as big and beautiful as the flower actually gets. Each day, that first bloom gets larger, and more full, as more petals grow. That represents the editing process. After all of the edits are complete, and the finished manuscript is polished to it's perfection; you start to realize that, just like a flower, it has bloomed. So that's why I refer to them as seed ideas. A lot of other explanations are given, each by their own author. Each and every person has their own description of these simple ideas; and we all know that some are just a bit more complex than others. For example, a very simple idea is that a boy and girl fall in love and eventually, after a few struggles, they live happily ever after. You see how simple that idea is. But it's also a very common one. The more complex ideas are often more unique, and come from the imagination, not what other people think.

For me, these ideas start coming to me when I'm in the midst of something else. Reading, watching television, riding in the car, browsing the internet, and, most of all, when I'm writing my own work. A lot of times I'll come up with seed ideas that I think might relate to my book, though only slightly. Sometimes I end up using these in my current manuscript, though, normally, I end up writing it down in my Writer's Notebook for later use in another story. I realize that I haven't exactly explained what a writer's notebook is yet, even though it is the title of my blog. I promise that I'll touch on that soon. But, basically, it's just a notebook that I write in every day, putting down my ideas and thoughts, for use in books later on. But get this straight. It is NOT a journal, nor a diary. I'll explain that in more depth another day.

One more thing though, before I leave. I once read something about writing, that said that to create a great book, you must combine the mundane and the extraordinary. Right now, I'm calling a can of worms on that (I'll write about that later), but I feel like it fits perfectly right here. At least a really simplified example. Basically, when you combine what seems normal (a high school kid) and then add something extraordinary (his teacher, is say, a ghost, or something similar) it adds an interesting touch. I realize that this is a very old example, and, it has been done a whole lot, especially in manga comics, but that was the example that was simply on the top of my head at this very moment. So, until next time, write on!!

Double Trouble

Like I mentioned on the last post, I had started the outlining/planning stage of a new novel, trying to up my word count for Milwordy (the challenge to get a million words written in a year. Last night I was doing the math and I realized that I only have to do 3k words a day to be able to get my Milwordy. That's not bad, since I can get those words done in a little less than an hour and a half using Write or Die. I actually started trying to figure out what my style of planning/outlining was by going online and simply looking up a ton of ideas. I tried snowflake outlining, but that sort of got old pretty quick.

I also tried a basic, everyday phase outline. That worked (I was using it on my Blue Flames novel) until I got tired of writing out all of those separate stages and sort went on a fly by the seat of my pants type of thing instead. I liked that, but I don't think that I could do it for the whole novel. I'm also thinking that I could do a snowflake outline if I wanted to, and I decided that it's probably the current novel that I'm working on that's totally not working for that type of outline. And also my personality. The snowflake method has you expand your plot slowly but still steadily - my personality makes me want to describe everything in great detail the first time around. Unless I do a really, really, REALLY simplified version.

Taking those notes into consideration, I think I finally found what works for me. Or at least for my current novel. What I did for this novel (Double Trouble I think it's going to be called) is made a list of 10 plot points - you know, major parts of the story that can actually be greatly expanded. That's what I did - found 10 parts of the story I thought would be interesting enough to be able to expand to at least 5k. (I did the math and figured out that each plot point would have to be around 5k words when finished to make a 50k novel, which is the minimum accepted length.)

That wasn't it, though. I then went into a separate document and expanded each plot point, though only slightly. It wasn't too hard, and I have a full page summary of my novel. That gives me a bit more detail to put into my scenes when I'm doing my work in Ywriter, which I'm also having a lot of fun exploring. Ywriter is a free program that actually allows you to write notes, keep characters, locations, items, chapters and scenes all in order, as well as outlining, doing the actual writing, and editing, all in the same program! Check it out. So, until next time, have fun and go write something!!

Time to Spare

It seems that lately, ever since the Christmas season is over, I've had tons of time to spare. I think that it's something about how busy we are that time of the year, and I'm not quite used to all of the blank spots on the calender yet. I've actually done a lot more editing on Blue Flames since my last post, but I just couldn't find the time to be interested enough to sit down and type out this post. So far I've gotten 58 pages edited into the second draft - I've been keeping a tracksheet in my writer's notebook with the date, the number of pages, and which edit it is.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how many drafts it will actually take to finish the book, but, I'm thinking, that after this one, I'll still have two more left. I could be wrong, and only need one more edit, but I guess we'll see about that. After the second draft is complete, I'm going to give it to a couple of people to read - I still haven't let anybody else see it yet because it's really pretty bad.

I don't know if I've said it on here before or not, but this novel was written mostly in November 2010, for NaNoWriMo. That is the challenge to write 50k words in the month of November. It's not really as bad as it seems though. I did a lot of word padding during November; little tricks here and there that I added in just to boost my word count. Even though I was sure that it would need edited out later. **Hangs head**

A lot of people actually do that in November; mostly because they wouldn't be able to complete it with all of their holiday preparations, cooking, baking, and anything else that needs done in November (like general living). I didn't do it as bad as some other people did, only a couple of random spots in the book, with one little trick (no contractions; do not instead of don't, should not instead of shouldn't, etc, etc, etc.)

There are a lot worse tricks in the book than that one, and, personally, it doesn't bother me that much that I did that. Mostly what I was having trouble with was the descriptions. I described everything to the best of my ability, which gave me quite a bit of padding. What they don't actually tell you though, about descriptive writing, is that it's not always a good thing.

People always say to describe everything to the fullest extent possible. I've found myself, however, in the editing process, going back and editing out a whole lot of the describing words that I used in the first place. When you actually read, out loud, a sentence that has been written in this way, it just starts to sound funny. Instead of a smooth flowing sentence in which all of the words seem to work together, you end up with a choppy sentence that is almost annoying to read.

Editing out all of those excess words helps that tremendously. Now, one more thing before I leave. When it does actually come time to edit your novel, don't be afraid to cut stuff. In the beginning I was totally obsessing over what needed to go, and what needed to replace it, if anything. Now that I've gotten about a quarter of the way through my book, I realize that it doesn't matter as much as you think it does in the very beginning. I just work on creating flowing sentences that flow together, and paragraphs that pull you into the next section or chapter. Now for my closing words. Go write something!!