Behind the Scenes Part 2: Drafting

Welcome to Behind the Scenes, Part 2. As you know, Author Christopher Hopper and I are working on a new fantasy series called The Berinfell Prophecies. Book 1: Curse of the Spider King is finished and will be out in stores Oct. 15th, or so I was told most recently. Now, we're working on the second book in the series.

Today, we're going to look into the drafting process. In other words, now that we've got an outline, a blueprint of where we're going with the story, we need to write out our very first draft, the ROUGH draft. I need to emphasize rough because to many would-be authors try to skip steps in the writing process by being too careful during that first draft. We agonize over the right word or right name; we stare at one paragraph trying for the most righteous turn of the phrase; or perhaps we labor over dialogue to get it "just right." Can I lift a burden from your shoulders? Don't do it that way. You will only frustrate yourself and slow yourself down.

For the rough draft, you just need to get those ideas down. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, word choice, colorful verbs, etc. etc. {Gag} Just write. Think of it this way: Suppose you have 2 hours to write today. You can either take your outline and run with it, ignoring the impulse to agonize over "just the right word" and finish two hours later with seven pages of content. OR, you can try to draft, revise, edit, proofread, and redraft--ALL in one step. In the end you will have a beautiful piece of prose...perfect even. But, it'll be one paragraph. Hmmm...

Another thing to think about is the importance of creative momentum. Your mind is a complex thing. Story comes flowing out of it, one thought leading to another and then another. Sometimes, you have to write several pages before something really REALLY cool comes along. Suppose, however, you are stop-start, stop-starting all over the place, trying to make it perfect in one shot...you may never get to that great idea that's lurking around the corner…if you could just get past yourself and get to the next page of content.

For Christopher and I, coauthoring a book means we need to talk logistics: what scene are you going to do? Where do you see that falling in the narrative? See the below capture of our iChat.





Once we've figured out who's writing what scenes, we draft the scenes. Our "system," if you can call it that, is to each write our rough drafts of 2-3 chapters. Then, we send it to the other for revising. We give each other TOTAL permission to make any changes we want--without using the "Track Changes" feature. In this way, we develop "OUR" voice rather than his and mine. After we revise the other's scenes, we send them back to the original author for "final" revisions. During this time, the original author may change some things back or alter things additionally. To us, it just doesn't matter. It can't matter. See below for an example of a section of Christopher's writing that I've "purple penned." I like to lay down on the bed with hard copies of the work and go to town on it with pen. Then, I hit the computer and make my changes.


See below two iChat conversations between Christopher and I. These are actually well prior to Spider King. Christopher was working on Book 3 of the White Lion Chronicles: Athera's Dawn and I was working on Book 1 of The Dark Sea Annals: Sword in the Stars. (Both Books Due out in 2010).

Reason I show these two is that they exemplify the benefit of having someone to bounce ideas off of: each one of us has some wisdom or experience that the other can learn. We teach each other and learn from each other. And guess what, it's also so much fun that it should be illegal. :-)


Part Three will be up in a few weeks.

Never alone.

Writing and Publishing: Behind the Scenes, Part 1

Welcome to BTS, part one, the first segment where I'll take you behind the curtain to see what goes into inventing, writing, editing, and publishing a novel. Keep in mind: you haven't read Berinfell Prophecies Book 1: Curse of the Spider King, and this series of blog posts will delve into the creation of Book 2. Therefore, I'll have to leave many details concerning plot elements extremely vague. It's the process we're after, not spoilers, right?

Christopher Hopper is the CoAuthor of this series, and we are quite literally right at the beginning of the book. Today, it was all about inventing. We left several key threads dangling at the end of Spider King, so we began with those. What you see below is an iChat window. We began our session of brainstorming and outlining with iChat, but quickly realized we needed speed.

So, we used iChat's phone feature. That way, we could talk and hear each other while we worked. The window you see below is the speak function of iChat. So what'd we talk about? Chapter one.



Whenever I give advice to young writers and aspiring authors, I tell them to work exhaustively on chapter one. It may be the only chapter an agent or publisher looks at, so make it good. You really have to hook the reader. Action, Drama, Intense Emotion, Mystery, Danger--all good for opening chapters. Dialogue is good if it really gets us into a character or in the midst of a relationship between characters.

What to avoid:

1. Lots of narration
2. Lots of description
3. Dream sequences
4. Alarm clocks
5. Too many characters

Christopher and I left book 1 with several main characters making a journey...an important journey. However, as much as we'd like to spend pages describing the cool sights of this amazing fantasy world we're creating--they journeyed here, saw that, journeyed there, saw that--we knew that it's a snoozer of an opening. We ended up deciding on fast-forwarding to a battle scene, and not only that, but an ambush. Nothing says lovin' like a sneak attack! lol

The opening chapter decided on, we decided to "Begin with the end in mind." We had some thoughts of how Book 2 would end, so we brainstormed and fleshed that out a little. And it was here that we came to a bit of a road block. Our publisher has contracted with us for two books in the series, but we feel like it could go to a 3rd book, maybe 4. So the question became: How do we give a satisfying ending that still leaves some threads open for future books? Good question. First, we tackled the satisfying ending part. This means that any promises you made to readers need to be fulfilled. For example: If you hint that the treasure-greedy pirate will be betrayed by his own greed, then you'd better have it happen or readers will be peeved. Christopher and I are big fans of foreshadowing. We've dropped some very interesting breadcrumbs in book one that will become HUGELY important in book 2. So, we had to think of ways for these loose ends to connect to something very fun and interesting. In the end, we decided that we could end the climactic battle with the appearance of a new threat, one whose very nature would render him/her/it more perilous than anything readers have seen.

Now, we had the beginning and the end and lots of questions in between. What you see above is the file menu of Scrivener, our favorite all-powerful writing software. It absolutely rocks. Take a look at the way we set up our files. Under "draft" you see the outline in progress...just working chapter titles for now. Beneath that are our resource files. This is a whole fantasy world we're working on, so we've got Language Files, Bestiary, Geography, even a file for scenes that are so cool they have to be in the book....but uhm, we're not sure where yet. lol

After outlining for several hours, Christopher and I chose scenes. That is, there were several segments we each felt visually attached to. Christopher really wanted to tackle the opening battle scene. I, however, wanted to hit the relationships and a mounting internal conflict that needs to arise a bit later in the story. You might be thinking, but how can you do that? You don't know exactly what the other person is writing! That's somewhat true. I have an idea of what Christopher will put into the segment he's doing. But I don't need to be too concerned. It's kind of like connect the dots. My latter chapters might be a bit far away from Christopher's earlier chapters. But that's okay. The differences between them will suggest where we go on the chapters that fall in between.

That's a good tip for those of you who struggle with Writer's Block. Sometimes you just get stuck somewhere around chapter 8. Now, you've got a killer idea for chapter 17, but you don't go after it because you figure, you've got to go in order. NO. You don't. Write whatever scene is hot in your mind. Sometimes that latter scene will unblock the issue earlier on. And no matter what, the chapter that feels like fun will be better than the chapter that feels like a chore.

More to come in the following weeks. Stay tuned.

New Blog Series: Writing and Publishing a Novel--Behind the Scenes

When I was little, the first three Star Wars movies came out and blew everyone away. The special effects of Lucas' ILM took us places we never thought possible. And whenever one of those "The Making of..." programs came on, I was one of those geeked-out fans who watched with rapt attention. I can still remember watching how they filmed the X-Wing Fighter chase through the Death Star channel. COOL.

Even now, I absolutely love watching all the extra material on DVD's. I count The Lord of the Rings Extended Version Bonus DVDs among my most cherished treasures. lol. So I got to thinking that so many visitors to Enter the Door Within have tons of questions about writing and publishing. What if I take you behind the scenes?

Christopher Hopper and I have finished Curse of the Spider King. We're getting ready to hit the sequel now. So for the next series of posts, I will literally show you the nuts and bolts of how a novel comes together. From invention to editing, polishing to publishing--you'll see how it gets done. So tune in! You might even get a few sneak peeks at the new book. ;-)