On the specifics of my terrible writing

So maybe that title is a little overkill, but following on from the last post, I thought I would make clear the changes I'm making to my writing style. Usually I try and mix my blogs in with general advice to other aspiring authors, but things may be a little more specific to me this time. Of course if you fall prey to the same things I do/did, you are a FOOL and should be punished... I mean you can take this advice and change your own writing too. Bla.

I'm going to choose two examples of bits from my old draft, one good and one bad.

Here is the good one:

“Thing's change,” he muttered to himself quietly. And he knew he was speaking of more than his relationship with Eradeen. With every year of his life he looked back, he saw a different man, sometimes strong, other times desperately weak. Almost a year to the day his heart had been left to die by the woman he loved, and yet only two years before he had chosen her, sweet but serious Demm, to be the one he would love for the rest of his life.


A pale tear drop fell to the bottom of the page, seeping through the paper like a sea against sand. Dearon rested his head in his hands, breathing heavily as his eyes glazed over. A second tear fell, then a third, and before he could control himself he had ripped the unfinished letter in two. The torn halves rested gently on the table, unmoving in the shallow breeze.


Yeah I know I've used this example before in the blog, and no it's not the only bit of my old draft I like, but its the most poignant example I can think of. Last post I was talking about taking out some of the 'pretty' from my writing. I didn't mean bits like this. There are a few changes I would make here though; the word "shallow" is a bit pointless, maybe the "his heart was left to die" is a bit OTT, and the way some of the sentences are laid out is a bit questionable, but really these are tiny things that would get picked up in revision anyway. It's simple, to the point, and that is what makes it elegant. No where in that last paragraph have I explicitly stated Dearon's feelings, it's all actions that give you an impression of what's going on.

Now for me to be mean to myself. I love to do that. That's why I threw up in my room after drinking too much the other night so that now I have to sit in a room that smells like... anyway, enough of that. Don't drink kids, or if you're going to, don't drink like 5 different types of drink in one night. Stick to Carlsberg...

This is the bad extract, which I think I may have actually used as an example of good revision in an earlier blog, which is a little embarrassing... Oops. It's from the very start of the book. *shudder*

“Wake up Favoir”


Half-formed memories lost their focus. He tried to remember, but couldn't. He squinted. The room was dark, lit only by candles trailing smoke into his lungs, but his eyes saw a tapestry of colours, shielding the features of a new interrogator. A lead weight in his temple pulled his head downwards. The man moved closer.


*throws up again*

Seriously, I hate that now.

Like, really really hate.

You don't see why? Let me show you.

"Half formed memories lost their focus" IF THEY WERE ALREADY HALF FORMED THEY WOULD HAVE ALREADY BEEN OUT OF FOCUS YOU FOOL!!!!!

"He tried to remember, but couldn't." YOU JUST SAID THE MEMORIES WERE OUT OF FOCUS TWICE IN THE LAST SENTENCE, WHY WHY WHYYY ARE YOU DOING IT AGAIN???

"He squinted." Okay enough CAPS. This was just me deliberatly putting in a short sentance to add tension. But if you're going to do that, make the short sentance something important like "the door opened" or "he screamed" not "he f***ing squinted!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111"

"The room was dark, lit only by candles trailing smoke into his lungs, but his eyes saw a tapestry of colours, shielding the features of a new interrogator." Okay this bit isn't so bad. If you can find a flaw, let me know, I wanna rip into it so bad...

 "A lead weight in his temple pulled his head downwards." = Ian thinking "I want a metaphor!" Classic example of me trying too hard, and even if it isn't a pain for the reader, it makes me shudder


"The man moved closer." Fine this bit is okay as well. Better that the bloody squinting thing...


So I think it's pretty safe to say i won't be copying that bit into the new draft. In fact I'm re-writing the prologue without a single bit of the original in it. I tried a re-write which had some bits from the original in it, and it didn't work out so well. This new one rocks so far. It's simple in a good way, like that first extract. It gets the point across, and lets the plot, characters and dialogue work their magic. I hope. I really do hope.

BUY MY BOOK when it's published.

Ian.

P.S. Very very sorry for all the caps

P.S.S. Before I go I wanna mention this blog I found. It's by a literary agent (google the term if it confuses you) and its a great insight into the world of writing and publishing, with a ton of great content. http://blog.nathanbransford.com/

The inevitable "1 month later" blog post

Oh hello there blog! Almost forgot about you. Well, no I didn't I just was far too busy being a lazy student to write anything on here. Plus I had a break from my book, so was running short on things to type. But I'm back now. And back for good. Until I get lazy again. So probably after this blog post. I'm getting kinda tired now though. Although it is 2.44am...

Anyway, the point! Big, scary news here...

I'm rewriting my book!

"What? But you were really happy with your draft as it was Ian, why oh why oh why would you do such a thing??? WHY DAMMIT WHY???" Wow, chill out man. You need some medication or something.

Well, I was really really happy with the way the draft was going, to the extent that I could have quite easily carried on with it, and after revisions and stuff got it to a standard where I would be happy sending it to a publisher. But that would have been the easy way out. And it will end up a better book because of this rewrite, the reason for which I shall explain some time around...




...now.

So basically there are three main reasons I decided to do this.

1. The world has changed.

When I say world, I mean my book world. If you have been reading my previous blog posts, you should know I've been doing quite a bit of world building recently. I've been making up religions, date/time systems, and all other random things to make everything feel a little more alive. As well as that, because of the section of the book I was writing before i stopped, I got thinking about the technology level of the world a bit more.

Here's a mini spoiler for you folks...

There is a nation in my book called Sion, and Sion for reasons not revealed right away is very advanced in terms of technology. They are also incredibly secretive. They impose a sort of North-Korea-esk policy on people going in and out, but even stricter. There language is coded, and changes all the time. They're paranoid basically. The reason for this is that there income as a nation is provided by the slow relinquishing of technology to the outside world. So this got me thinking...

Why don't I make some of their technology really advanced for a fantasy setting. How about some more of this advanced technology being relinquished to the rest of the world than I had originally envisioned. How cool would it be to have a fantasy book with swords and shields and... electricity! Because the rest of the world basically doesn't know how to invent things because they just rely on Sion, how about they have this amazing resource  but have only been granted basic inventions like light bulbs and stuff. I could go on, but you get the idea.

So rather than it being a fantasy world that fits quite comfortably into a real world era, I'm shaking things up a bit. I'm making it a bit more all over the place, and a bit more unique. All the while I will also be focusing more on things like the religious aspect of things, and general cultural differences. These are some pretty big changes, but I'd say they're not enough to warrant a complete rewrite. I could fix these in revisions, but...

2. I want a change of writing style.

More specifically, I want a simpler writing style. Some people can make words by themselves sound amazing. It doesn't matter about context always, they can write about boring things and make them sound super. But I can't. Well, sometimes I can a little. But only if I really try hard. And am lucky.

The problem with this is that I kept trying hard, and it created inconsistencies. Some bits I would have got lucky and they would sound great, other times it felt a little... forced. If writing style had a graph, I would have a line going all over the place. Sometimes high up, sometimes low down.

I haven't started reading it properly yet, but I had a glance at A Game of Thrones recently. I loved the TV series. But I was really surprised when I read the first page or two of the book with how simple the writing was. There were no fancy metaphors, alliteration, or any other things that people say make writing "pretty". It was straight to the point, and most importantly, it "flowed". Now I don't know about you, but I would trade off those occasional amazing sentences to get a book that flowed with the writing style. So now I'm writing in a way I know 100% I can do, that isn't jarring and lets the plot speak for itself. It's still got elements of "pretty" in it, but they're never forced, not if I can help it.

So now the argument is getting a bit more compelling, but you keen people surely remember me saying there were three reasons a while back. So here we go...

3. I've started stepping on my own toes

I actually can't think of an example of this specifically, but its just a general feeling I've been getting recently. I kinda feel like now everything is a bit more developed, and the plot is moving in ever so slightly different ways to it was going to move before, I'm sort of trying to fit in things from before I don't want to fit in just to make everything work well. It's sort of like *tries to think of analogy* drawing a circle. Oh yeah this is a good one.

You start at a random point on a piece of paper, and draw a circle. But you stray a little to one side. The pencil slips a little bit. You can't just force the line back into where you intended it to be now, or the circle would have a little jutting bit in it. You have to keep going with what you've got. What you end up with is a circle, but not the one you were planning at the start. It started and finished in the same place, but the rest of it is a little out. This time I'm going slow, thinking ahead, and making sure my circle is perfect.

I'll be honest, there are a bunch more reasons I can think of. But those are the main ones.

And if I'm going to do a rewrite, best do it now whilst i don't have the pressure of finding a publisher or getting the damn thing actually finished.

But most importantly, and the secret super hidden fourth reason I want to rewrite my book is that I want it to be super amazing. Not just super. Not just amazing. Super Amazing.

That is all.

Ian.

Metaphorical Page Ripping is Fun

This won't be a long blog post, as I'm taking a short break from my book at the moment, after working on it basically every day this holiday, and writing about 100 pages. (yay!).

I should be back writing in a few days, once I've moved into my university house and have found the perfect writing spot. At the moment I'm hovering about in the conservatory of my house whenever I feel like putting pen to paper to keys to netbook without the pen and paper part. Although it is quite annoying when it rains. Fortunately the chapter I'm writing now takes place on a very rainy day, so really it's all atmospheric.

Where was I?

Ah yes! Given that my last two posts were on revision, I wanted to stir things up. Be crazy for once. Radical man. So today I'm going to talk about the joy of ripping up entire chapters.

Well not ripping, unless you have a very thin laptop and super strength. Or write by hand. Crazy person.

But sometimes revision can't help. "Can't help? What do you mean? Stop destroying my belief system!" Sorry Mr. Voice, but it's true. Occasionally you will write something so terrible, so disgusting, so filled with bad language and terrible pacing that you just have to get rid. These times are obvious. When you are writing in a rush you tend to write bad, or I do at least. If you super speed write because a chapter is exciting, or you just want to get through it, it shows. Think of writing a book like doing a painting. And not a two blobs on a page modern art type thing, no no no! A proper painting. (Me + lazy art = urgh). Someone might glance at it and go 'ooo, that looks nice' and then look away again. But that doesn't mean you should rush by the details. It wouldn't have come together as a beautiful work if those details weren't there, even if not everyone really notices them.

Damn metaphors, getting me all distracted.

So as I say, it's pretty obvious when something just doesn't read well at all and you know you would be better just to start again. What isn't so easy is those times when you write something, and it is good, but it isn't right.

Yeah, we're going deep here. Right to the bottom of the ocean and then some more.

I started a new chapter a week and a bit ago, before I decided to have a break. I think I did about 5 pages, and whilst it was clearly not polished (none of my first drafts ever are) it could easily have been shaped into something good. In fact there were a few lines in there that I was like 'ooo, I wrote that? Nice!' And I'd even go so far to say that if I had carried it on, it would have worked. But it just didn't feel quite right.

The chapter before was all serious. It was two important people talking about important things. One specific important thing actually, and I think enough was said about it for the reader to get that this is an important thing. Thing. So then I sit down to write my next chapter, and guess what! It's those two important people, with the main character added as well, talking about this important thing. Now the real drama of this chapter would be something that happens at the end of their talk, but to get there you need to trudge through all the regurgitated information from the previous chapter. It not only felt boring, but it felt like I was going to the reader "Oi! You! Reader! This is important! Remember that thing from the last chapter! Yeah! It's really important  Don't forget that! Don't forget that it's important! Did you forget? Well I better tell you again then!"

So I just skipped to the drama. I know, crazy aren't I. But it felt so much better when I did. It was to the point, it started the chapter in a cool way, and it will save a few pages on a book that is turning out to be a lot bigger than I had thought. (1000 pages is starting to seem more plausible than 600...).

I think sometimes I worry too much about chapter structure. I always feel like I need to have a sort of exposition at the start, something to gently lead the reader into the chapter. I suppose this was important in the earlier chapters. The reader was meeting this characters for the first time, and they needed to be shown during some of the down time so that they seem human, rather than someone who is only there when plot related stuff is going on. But now I'm not really at the start any more. I'm 150 in. If I was a reader, I would be invested here. I would have up until now been reading what is an unusually long beginning to a book, and I'm ready for something a little more chewy.

If something you're writing has potential, keep writing it. If it feels right in the story, and you don't think you could do it any better, keep writing it. But don't be afraid just to rip up some pages, albeit metaphorically if you're me. It's sort of like in relationships. Writing a novel to me is a bit like finding 'the one'. There's no point staying on something this isn't right just so it's there. If you are committed to finding that person/book/person book hybrid, then don't accept any less. You might even find something better than you thought that surprises you!

Luckily for me my first book idea turned out to be 'the one', and my first girlfriend did too. : )

...

Although I did kiss my neighbour when I was in primary school.

...

And I did have that book idea about the magic orb that kills people when they touch it.

...

We don't talk about those things.


Ian.