A Writer's Retrospective: June 2021
The fourth decade begins…
Photo by Jorge Caetano on Unsplash
New home, new neighborhood, new relationship status (single)—an interesting way to start the fourth decade of my life. Between that, the advent of Gemini season, and the beginning of lockdown reversal, I spent most of the month waist-deep in tomfoolery. It's a wonder I got anything written amid the shenanigans.
Last Month's Action Items
Trying to be emotionally intelligent and self-compassionate, I only gave myself a few goals: finish the story I started freewriting last month, outline a short story, and outline a whole novel. Oh, and write up the overdue May retrospective.
Finish Dionysian Instinct
I did it! I had to use my secret weapon—voice transcription—to get it finished. I’m quite thankful that I’d read Write Your Novel From the Middle (James Scott Bell) in April, as I managed to go into the story knowing where I wanted the protagonist, Zylo, to be in the middle of the story and at the end of the story. I feel so much better with at least that much direction in mind. Also, Zylo is probably the most fun of the main characters in Iriseed, so it wasn’t hard to come up with scenes that would challenge him appropriately. I even got to attempt some humor (of the non-sarcastic kind).
On top of that, I even had time to edit it this month.
Outline Iriseed (Book 1)
Having written four short stories—three of which qualify as novelettes—I have discovered something: my outlining process doesn’t really work. I was very lucky with Savage Politics (#1) and Lunar Eclipse (#3) because the character’s situations lent themselves to a clear progression of stakes and decisions. The other two stories…well…that’s what first drafts are for, right? It’s fine to stumble around for a page or twenty, but who wants to do that for four-hundred pages?
So, I needed to come up with something different than my bare-bones outline template, which was of no help anyway. Someone name-dropped Save the Cat! Writes a Novel in a Discord channel. By the end of the fifth page, I knew I’d found the right book.
Ultimately, I didn’t finish the outline this month, but I made a lot of progress in doing so. I took my time reading the book and taking notes, so I spent the time well.
Outline Iniquitous Charity
This should have been an easy dunk; I tried to write this story a long time ago (2016). I didn’t get anywhere with it and I hated the result, but I had some characters and some context to work with. I sat down to attempt it once, but decided I was more interested in wrestling with the “bigger” problems of the month.
Draft May retro
You might have guessed this, based on the content of the May retrospective, but I didn’t get to it. A mess.
Writing
Mind map
I've been experimenting with the mind map, but I haven't fully embraced the concept, yet. Part of the problem has been finding a suitable tool for the process. Freeplane is basically fine for now—especially since the export feature seems to be working again. I was afraid to have all my work stuck in one program and didn’t spend much time mind mapping for that reason (laziness aside). Even so, I won’t be going out of my way to write the XSLT needed to transform the exported results any time soon…
My fifth story, Dionysian Instinct, was difficult to write, partially because I didn't have a clear idea of what was happening. Some people seem to be naturally creative—their difficulties lie in organization and execution. I seem to have those difficulties and then some, given the effort required to come up with story ideas. I hope the mind mapping business will do something productive in that regard. Of course, if I keep partying, I'll never get a chance to try it.
Outlining - Save the Cat! Writes a Novel
When coming up with a story idea, I tend to start with a vignette, then try to paint context around that vignette. I had an easy time writing Knightly Virtues (bad as it was) because the vignette was closer to the beginning of the story than the end. I now know that discarding the vignette is as good a solution to my problems as any (“kill your darlings,” in a sense).
Outlining a novel seems easy in concept, but I found it quite difficult in practice. Rather, I found the product unusable in my writing. The outline didn’t tell me what was important or what I should be addressing in each scene. The “golden triangle” described in Write Your Novel From the Middle provided backstory, a midpoint, and an ending for the novel, but I still didn’t know what came in between.
Almost everyone has heard the basic intro to story structure, including: rising action, climax, falling action, and the other stuff. Does nothing for me (and others, I imagine). Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel introduced to me the concept of story beats and the beat sheet that lays them out—with percentages (!).
Achievement Summary
1. Finished drafting Dionysian Instinct (again, stunningly apropos title for how I actually spent this month).
2. Read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.
Did not complete the outline for Iriseed, but I made some headway and gave myself a month of runway in which to conceive a first chapter.
Reflection
I had a hard time coming up with story beats, but in the process, I accessed a sensible framework for choosing pivotal events to foreshadow and demonstrate the protagonist’s transformation (as described in the golden triangle). Consequently, parts 1 and 2 of the Snowflake method makes more sense to me now, but the golden triangle and the beat sheet resonated with me more. I imagine, going forward, that these two steps will become a permanent part of my story development technique.
Action Items
While I enjoyed my month of “recovery,” I knew I had my work cut out for me in terms of outlining the novel, getting the outline reviewed, and writing prose.
1. Outline Iriseed.
2. Receive feedback on the outline.
3. Write Chapter 1.
4. Edit and submit it to the critique group.
5. May and June retrospectives.
Final Word
I wrestled with my writing a lot this month, but it’s all in the name of progress—which I can demonstrate concretely with my improved outline. I better understand what makes a story work…implementation will be another story.