Enough to go on?

Two short answers today. Both questions come from Lark on December 10, 2012. First: Gail (and anyone else), do you ever spend a lot of time writing something or pursuing an idea then just trashing it? I wrote 20,000 words for my NaNo novel but most of it was junk; I just kept saying to myself, “At least it’s words. And at least it counts.” However, probably only about 20% of it is acceptable writing, and the other 80% would need LOTS AND LOTS of revisions to even make it make sense. Do you ever stick it out if you’re in that situation?

I’m a revise-as-I-go writer, which is one reason I haven’t attempted NaNoWriMo. And I’m a revising-after-I-have-a-first-draft writer, too, plus plenty of revising after that. This is why I haven’t found myself in the situation Lark describes. BUT I’m a big admirer of NaNoWriMo, which is great for spilling all your ideas, for creating marvelous scenes and dreadful scenes. At the end, you have something to work with if you want to.

I’ve discussed this before here. There’s a time cost either way. If you abandon what you have, then the time you spent on it is lost. If you work on it, revising may take longer than an entire new project would, if the new project goes smoothly. But that’s writing for you. Efficiency experts would tear out their hair.

There is no shame either way. You can move on to something else, knowing in your skull bones that you learned from this unresolved effort. Or you can start shaping and tweaking and deleting and adding, sticking essentially with what you have.

There’s a third way, too. You can use your old effort to create something entirely new, or several new somethings. Start by rereading what you have, no matter how painful that is. Underline what you like. Take notes. Think about where you could go with this or that. Admire your interesting ideas, your bits of scintillating dialogue, the moments when you nailed a character. Ask yourself if see a way to sew it all together or if you see a bunch of new spinoff stories.

On to another question from Lark: Is it okay to start a story if you have wonderful, realistic, well-rounded characters, but no plot or idea of where your story will go? Or on the flip side, starting a story with a great idea and thought-out plot but hastily pieced together and un-thought-out characters? Or do you wait until you have everything thought out? I’m having quite a problem with that…

It’s okay to start if that’s your process. I often start with less than either of those two. But if you need an outline in order to feel secure, then I’d say, Create that first.

In the first instance, the thought-out characters, you can jumpstart the plot by giving one of them a desire that’s not easy to realize. For example, suppose Henry – kind at heart but with a temper and a need for things to go his way – argues with his sister Marigold and says something awful to her. They separate for their ordinary days. Soon after, he realizes he was horrible and hurt her where she was most vulnerable. He makes her a present that he knows she’ll love to make it up to her. But meanwhile something terrible happens to her: she’s in a coma or she’s been shanghaied onto a spaceship bound for Mars or her personality has been taken over by an evil elf or anything else. Henry has to save her so he can give her her present and apologize.

Now we have the beginnings of a plot. So we look around at our other well-developed characters. Tricia is Henry’s closest friend although she’s unreliable in a pinch and she’s very self-centered. Henry tells her what happened and she responds however she would, and we’re off.

Or you can give two of them desires that are at odds. Say Marigold has died. Henry’s life mission has become to be helpful, to insult no one ever again, never to leave anyone with hurt feelings. Tricia wants Henry to side with her in her argument with another of their friends. He doesn’t want to get in the middle but he doesn’t want Tricia mad at him. And the third friend has yet another agenda.

Or we can look at our fascinating cast and ask what fiction we can create by rubbing them against each other. Let’s say we have Henry and Tricia as I’ve described them. And Marigold is a dreamer, kind of other-worldly, easily hurt. And there’s Ray, adventuresome, a little scattered, who tends to talk and not listen. We can send them off together, camping or to a city they don’t know well. They argue about what to do or where to go. The others don’t get with Ray’s program, and he stomps off. They let him go but his absence ruins their good time, and they get a strange text message from him. And the story is off and running.

The second instance, when you have a plot but no developed characters, is most familiar to me. It’s where I am when I start adapting a fairy tale, so let’s pick one and see how it works. I’ve never tried my hand at “Rapunzel,” so we’ll try that one. Well, I’d think about the damsel. What’s she doing in the tower? She could be passive and helpless. The witch decides to keep her there, and she goes. Or, maybe she’s been imprisoned because she’s the opposite of passive and helpless. The witch has tried other ways to control her, say reason and kindness, which haven’t worked. Rapunzel could even be the villain! She needs to be in that tower in order for the rest of the kingdom to be safe. But she starts preparing her hair as bait to get her out of there.

Next we think about the witch or the prince. If Rapunzel is bad, that changes our perspective on everybody else. Take the prince. Why does he get involved with her? Maybe he thinks the best of everyone. Or maybe he likes to reform people, and he thinks if only he can spend some time with Rap, he can turn her around. He may be putty in her hands. Maybe the witch is the heroine, and the story is a tragedy because Rapunzel does get free.

I love having a bare-bones plot to ornament with interesting characters!

The prompts today are in the post:

• Henry insulted his sister Marigold, and something dreadful has befallen her. Pick one of my possibilities or create your own. Write the story of his quest to save her and redeem himself. Include Tricia as his sometime helper and sometime obstacle.

• Marigold is dead, and Henry is a damaged person. Tricia wants him on her side in an argument, but Henry never wants to offend anyone ever again. Put what happens in a story.

• Henry, Tricia, Ray, and Marigold are with their youth group on a trip to New York City, where they’ve never been before. They wander off to have their own adventure, but then argue over what it should be. Ray goes off on his own. He gets into trouble, and so do they. Write what happens. Your version of New York City can include zombies, talking buildings, whatever you like.

• Take the approach that I suggest with “Rapunzel” or any other fairy tale. Develop characters who will go interestingly in the direction of the story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

21 Responses on “Enough to go on?”

  2. Athira Abraham says:

    I love the Rapunzel bit!
    I was wondering if there is any way you can keep going in a story without abandoning it. I have tried saying "You might be published one day" but that didn't really work. What do you do to keep writing?

    • Michelle Dyck says:

      Well, I assume you were addressing Mrs. Levine, but I'll throw in my two cents if you don't mind.
      I've been working on the same novel for four or five years now, and it's come a LONG way! 🙂 (Almost to publication.) So I've had to cultivate perseverance – and patience. One thing that helps when you're ready to throw in the towel is to look back and remember why you love your story so much. It can be easy to forget that when you're stuck in a plot rut or slaving away on one revision after another, but sometimes reigniting your passion is all it takes. Other times you have to sit back, take a break, and then jump back in and just plow through. Writing is work…it's fun, but it's also hard work sometimes. Gritty determination can help you get through the 'I-want-to-shut-this-story-in-an-underground-vault-and-never-look-at-it-again' phases.
      The how and why of writing is rather abstract and difficult to explain, but I hope this helps!

  3. Bibliophile says:

    I loved your Henry and Marigold example. It reminded me of a short story by Wodehouse called The Making of Mac's. I like the idea for fairy tales too. It would be really cool to write one from a bad princess's Pov like Cinderella or Snow White. Maybe you could use your own prompt and give us one with a Rapunzel or maybe even little mermaid???

  4. Aspire to inspire says:

    I'm writing a story a bit like the Rapunzel idea- The little mermaid from the POV of the princess who marries the prince in the end, but I'm having a little trouble actually getting the first few pages down. Once that happens, I know from experience that I will write the rest in a blast, but I am getting restless. Any help?

    • Bibliophile says:

      Maybe you should put in some backstory with the princess and the mermaid. Maybe, once upon a time, they were great friends. That will make the betrayal even more ghastly. You can rationalize it by showing that the princess, as well as the mermaid, had no choice. And of course the princess won't know how much trouble the mermaid is in because she can't talk! Personally, I love novels based on fairytales and if you ever get this published I would love to read it.

  5. Kathryn Briggs says:

    Hi, Ia m truly obsessed with Alice in Wonderland- always have been- and I want to write a story a bit like you did with the fairies, but with sub-characters from Alice in Wonderland, but I don't know which ones to chose.
    Any help?

    • Athira Abraham says:

      How about the Queen of Hearts? Why is she always beheading people? Or maybe the March Hare or Dormouse.

      Talking about Alice in Wonderland,if someone is writing a retelling and there are 2 queens (one of them is the Queen of Hearts), can the other be a Chess Queen and the kind one? Sort of like Tim Burton's movie, but I'm not exactly sure if I am copying or anything. Would that be allright?

      And also, do we need permission from anyone to write a book of a movie that came out into a novel? (for e.g alice in wonderland or tangled)

  6. Eliza says:

    Aspire to inspire and Kathryn Briggs-I heard somewhere that you can do whatever you want with a fairytale so long as you include the key elements. Cinderella has to have glass slippers and Rapunzel needs long hair whether she lives in a tower of maximum security prison. Wonderland has a lot of elements-cards, tea, croquet. Take the ones that intrigue you the most and do the same with the characters. Ask yourself why the queen uses a flamingo instead of a mallet.
    Little Mermaid doesn't have as many, but I know the original tale has a cursed knife drifting around the ocean at the end. Who finds that knife? The mermaid's sister, maybe? What will she want to do with it?
    Don't know if any of that will help, but, something to think about.

  7. Athira Abraham says:

    I was wondering, when writing books, some authors might make maps to visualize the places better. Are the maps that come in published books the ones the author drew, or that someone else drew? I know that in A Tale of Two Castles, you had a map of the kingdom of Lepai. Did you or someone else draw that?

  8. Athira Abraham says:

    Kathryn Briggs- How about the Queen of Hearts? Why is she always beheading people? Or maybe the March Hare or Dormouse.

    Talking about Alice in Wonderland,if someone is writing a retelling and there are 2 queens (one of them is the Queen of Hearts), can the other be a Chess Queen and the kind one? Sort of like Tim Burton's movie, but I'm not exactly sure if I am copying or anything. Would that be allright?

    And also, do we need permission from anyone to write a book of a movie that came out into a novel? (for e.g alice in wonderland or tangled)

    • gailcarsonlevine says:

      ALICE AND WONDERLAND is in the public domain, which means you can do whatever you like. If you mean the Disney movie TANGLED, that's still copy protected. We can't turn movies into novels or vice versa without permission, unless the original is in the public domain, and I doubt that any movies are yet. Copyright lasts a long time.

    • Athira Abraham says:

      So then its ok to do anything with a story as long as it is in public domain, right? But what if we found an idea from a Disney movie of a fairy tale that we would like to incorparate in our novel/story?
      Would it be allright for Rapunzel to have magical hair? Could there be 2 queens that are sisters- one evil (cards represent her), one kind (chess represents her)- in ALICE IN WONDERLAND?
      I get SO confused with copyright & public domain.

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