My Crazy Process: Creating Side Characters

So in preparation for this year's NaNoWriMo, I've been hammering out my new book. Think Salem Witch Trials + Book of Job + a pandemic plague, all on an abandoned, near-future Galveston Island. Most of the book takes place in a religious commune and I want this community to feel solid and real.

I've had some trouble coming up with side characters (aka, the members of the commune), but I finally figured out a process.

Piles of people!

Now, I admit it looks kind of crazy. It's the kind of stuff that might raise questions in more stable-minded folk. But I gathered almost 150 pictures of random people - all ages, genders, races, etc. - cut them out and started making families out of them.

I'm totally normal, right? Right.

I think the reason this has really helped me is that I'm a visual person. I've had "concept photos" of my main characters since the beginning. Looking at a person's face helps me envision an entire life for them. Helps me figure out who they are. A face is the starting point. Give me that and I can create an entire world.

I know a lot of people don't function like this. They're less visual or perhaps just less OCD. That's great.

This is the kind of background work that often isn't obvious in a finished novel, but even if you don't memorize the charts, even if you don't keep track of who is related to whom and how they got there, I hope I can give you a depth. The impression of a real community - of real people who live and love and work together through all the trials that I will undoubtedly put them through.

100 Writer's Project: In the Beginning

Introducing... Claudia Wagner!

My first novel, first draft almost finished. How did I get here? If I were Michener I would start--In the beginning, God. This blog post begins only a little later than that, but well before cell phones and the internet.

I used to write and submit poetry for publication. Acceptance letters along with the standard thank you and a promise of two copies of the issue in which my poem would be published thrilled me. But in those pre-cell-phone days, it cost a fortune to call all my friends and relatives long distance to tell them the good news. Not to mention the expense of buying additional copies of said issue and postage to send those copies to friends and relatives.

I’ve worked for a small-town daily newspaper. I’ve seen my by-line and my name in cutlines enough. But the idea of a book with my name on the spine sitting on a shelf in the Edmond Public Library seems much too grand. It shimmers above me in the night sky, brighter than the moon. A dream, a desire, a star too brilliant to look at and too distant to touch.

Knowing that a novel was beyond me, my book started out as a short story. I’ve written short fiction. I took a course in college. I understand how it works. So all I needed was a prompt of some kind and a deadline. My daughter provided the prompt and the deadline allowing me to choose the genre.

I ignored her prompt and chose murder and science fiction. And I went to work.

The deadline came and went, and the work proved to be as undisciplined as I. The story would not limit itself to short fiction. So I reconsidered the situation and decided to do a little book, a murder mystery that takes place on a colony in low orbit around the asteroid Ceres. But I needed help.

I happened to attend a monthly meeting of Oklahoma City Writers, Inc. at which William Bernhardt was doing a two hour presentation on novel writing. He talked about outlining. An instant turnoff since my research paper days too many years ago. But he made sense and showed how to plan the structure of my book. He was talking about the actual nuts and bolts of constructing a book-length story.

Three years plus several months, three of Bill Bernhardt’s intensive writing workshops plus a conference here and there, and I am coming around the last turn on this full-length murder mystery science fiction novel.

Bill said write every day. Four hours a day. If I had done that the book would have been finished long ago. Did I mention that I’m undisciplined? I heard somewhere that Stephen King says to write four hours a day and read eight hours a day. Or was that Mark Twain?  The eight hours reading I could go for, whoever said it.

There was a recommendation that I join a writers’ critique group for support and critical input. But that meant I had to also give support and critical input. I left every one of those meetings feeling bad because I had said harsh things to people as earnest about their writing as I was about mine. Tact is not one of my virtues. And have I mentioned lack of self-control?

Then somewhere else the advice was to just write it all the way through, do not do any editing until the story is complete. What a good rule. But mine is a murder mystery. As I wrote I discovered things that needed to appear earlier in the story. That required a rewrite of a scene. Editing? Even sitting down to begin the next writing session without looking at what I’d done the day before was impossible. Reading the work from the day before required minor or major changes. Did I mention that I tend to break rules even when I impose them myself?

What have I learned these past three-hundred, ten pages, and counting? Somewhere I heard that the definition of the verb to persevere is to begin again, and again, and again. No matter how many times my discipline fails, my control is lost, and my rules are broken, I can begin right now where I am. My book will be written and I will be launched into the night sky to find my name on the spine of a book in the Edmond Public Library. Just gotta finish this book first.

Claudia Wagner

I was born in Oklahoma. I learned to read under my mother’s ironing board. I learned the importance of stories around the dinner table during holidays and in the cellar during storms. I started writing to entertain my classmates. I continued to write because classes or work required it. Sometimes I wrote to understand my life. I have been office help, a welfare case worker, a fast foods manager, and a roustabout in the oil patch. I have also worked for the USDA. I’ve managed a veterinary clinic, helped care for my dying mother, and been a Page at the Edmond Library. I am a woman, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. I believe the future of humanity is as unlimited as the Universe. And I believe that we as a species are imaginative enough and brave enough to move beyond the Earth into that Universe.

For more from Claudia, check out her blog, The Bookwright.

100 Writers Project: Kill Your Darlings!

Introducing Jesse Rebock!

About ten years ago (that'd put me in middle school, I suppose), I took up a pen and decided I'd write a story. After a hundred video games, books, and movies, how hard could it be, right? Heck I've been telling stories long before that - not that they were any good - but a novel, eh? Now there's a challenge.

Several revisions, a hundred epiphanies, and ten years later, I figured I'd finally gotten it down. It wasn't as though I'd spent all that time working solely on writing, but after picking up the hobby and deciding to make it a serious business, I edited and wrote and patched and fixed and edited again. I even attended the Writer's Digest Conference of 2013 and pitched my book idea at a multitude of agents, having garnered enough confidence from peers and anonymous critiquers alike.

But I came to a horrible realization. This book, the first of planned series of seven (maybe eight), was wrong.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing the story, got very involved with the characters, and especially loved piecing together the setting. I had written histories, bloodlines, even finished a rough-draft of book two. The characters and the world(s) in which they lived were as alive in my mind as a celebrity is to …well, to a normal person. I had gotten loads of positive response and praise until I spoke to one person who changed everything.

And all she did was ask me the simplest of questions, even after reading it herself. "What is the plot?"

I couldn't answer, and was horrified because of it.

I realized that this story, this "gateway" breakout novel, was little more than the ramblings of a teenager, without direction or meaning or subtext. Over the years, the story stuck with me, and I kept adding to it, eventually laying a plot line over the "journey" that I had spent years polishing. But said plot-line was not only sub-par, it was boring.

So lo and behold, I found myself in a position I would never have thought myself to see. Rewriting a book, yeah, that's feasible. Roll up the old sleeves and crack your knuckles, it's going to be a lot of work. But I had attended a Pitch Slam only weeks before, and was still waiting to hear back from the last of the agents. At this point, I'd heard from a few who'd read samples, and was rejected. But now, with the new-found realization that I not only needed to, but wanted to fix the novel, I actually felt relief in seeing the rejections.

After all, what if one of them actually said they liked it, and wanted to see more? I would have to turn them down. Turn THEM down.  Who ever heard of a first-time up-and-coming writer turning down the publishers?

So after a few days of contemplation (and they thought I was working at my day job! Ha~ha, nice try sucka!) I formed an idea. Scrapped it. Played with some other ideas. Something stuck. I'll skip this part - you all know how chaotic and subjective the creative process can be. Suffice it to say, I put my mind to the grindstone. Is that even a phrase? You know, put so much concentrated, prolonged mental effort that you work up an appetite despite lunch concluding fourteen minutes ago.

I did what I had dreaded - I went back to square one. The story was not scrapped entirely, for there is much that remains in it that I will salvage, but there's going to be some serious trimming and the addition of two story-lines coinciding with the original ­solo. I made a plan, I used spreadsheets, I jotted down ideas on Post-Its and transcribed them to digital later.

The short of it: I now have a plot (gasp), and by extension a better story. Gathered a bunch of proverbial phoenix downs after ritualistically slaying my books original premise, and without getting into details, well, I'm more emboldened and excited than ever.

I have taken up two new mantras as a direct result of this event in my writing career.

“Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.”
― Michael Crichton

and

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
― Stephen King, On Writing

Fantasy Writer, Health Nut, Mango Slayer. I'm kind of a self-described audiophile and harbor a passion for trivia. I was born in Connecticut, raised in the Catskills of New York, and matured in New Jersey. I’ve traveled a little - been to Alaska and S. Korea - and hope to travel more in the future; life is an experience and I’m hoping to experience quite a lot. I have a degree in Fine Arts, have taught English as a
Second Language, and have a penchant for listing things in threes. Also really enjoy mythology and linguistics - often lacing my writings
with hidden meanings and dastardly names.

Favorite and/or Influential Books:  Shogun (James Clavell), Ravnica: City of Guilds Trilogy (Cory J. Herndon), Dune (Frank Herbert), Foundations (Isaac Asimov), The Hobbit (Yeah yeah…)

If you're interested in learning more about Jesse Rebock, follow him on Twitter, or check out his blogs, redamnesia.wordpress.com (more traditional blog posts)
redamnesia.blogspot.com (Fantasy Writings for public viewing.)

100 Writers: Inspired by Revision

Introducing Alexis Lantgen

One of the things that you discover when you're writing your first novel is that the internet is full of advice. Write quickly, they say. Self-Publish! No, find an agent! Be yourself! But write something marketable! Books are dead! All your stories should contain at least one vampire! Don't write about vampires unless you want to make an agent gag!

There are tons of lists everywhere you look on twitter and blogs. Top ten mistakes most authors make. Top ten things you should do to promote your work. Top ten reasons why your book isn't selling. Ten top ways to get a billion twitter followers. Blah.

This advice starts to get tedious, especially when you realize that it's all A) completely contradictory B) not your style and C) boring. I suspect that anyone who has a fascinating story buried inside them somewhere can't stand reading these goddamn lists after a while, much less writing one. So despite the mountain of advice out there for new writers, actually getting your book on paper for the first time feels like forging an entirely new path.

This probably shouldn't surprise anyone who knows about what actual writers are like. Ernest Hemingway probably never wrote anything until he'd had at least three glasses of scotch, while Jane Austin wrote on her dining room table. Douglas Adams wrote while listening obsessively to music like the Beatles. In other words, no one does it the same way, and what works for one writer may not for another (although I'd be curious to see what Jane Austin would write after three glasses of scotch). Maybe you write best early in the morning, and maybe there are no workable thoughts in your mind before noon. Maybe you work differently on some days then you do on others. Whatever feels like the right way to work, that is the right way to work.

So writing my first novel has ultimately been about discovering how I work best. Some of my discoveries so far? I can't NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I tried, I really did, but I...must...revise. I can't just write and write without fixing things. In fact, I get hopelessly stuck when I try it. On the other hand, revising my previous chapters inspires me to write more. Why? It helps me to remember some of the fine details I've included in my story thus far, and I can rewrite characters or scenes to give my later chapters more impact. Most important, it helps me keep my entire story in mind, so that every scene feels like a part of the whole. I understand that for some people, NaNo helps them get out their first draft, but it doesn't suit everyone, so don't feel bad if you're a NaNo dropout like me. It doesn't mean you can't still finish your novel.

So revision helps me find my inspiration. If that works for you, great. If not, try something else. No matter what anyone on the internet or elsewhere tells you, it only takes one thing to become a writer, and that's actually writing things. Find your story, and you find your core. That’s what’s worked for me--I love my story. I want to finish it, whether it’s published or not, or critically praised or not, or even if no one reads it but me. If you’re not in love with the story you’re writing, then write something else and keep writing until you find a story you love. Because chances are, if you love it, someone else will too.

Alexis Lantgen
Alexis Lantgen is a musician and writer who holds a master’s degree in music performance from Florida International University, as well as a Bachelor of Music in viola performance and a Bachelor of Arts in Letters (Magna cum Laude) from the University of Oklahoma. She performs on violin and viola in orchestras including the Wichita Falls Symphony and the San Angelo Symphony. She currently teaches private violin and viola lessons, and in the past taught eighth grade English and ESL in Dallas public schools. Her first novel is a YA Urban Fantasy about a young African American boy with special powers who must save his sister from an evil voodoo sorcerer and his demonic feathered serpent. She hopes to finish editing and revising her manuscript by this summer.

For more from Alexis, you can follow her blog or catch her on Twitter

If you are interested in participating in the 100 Writers Project, comment below or contact Grace Wagner on her Facebook page or Twitter.