Hello writers. Roald Dahl was once driving in his car when an idea flew into his head. Swiftly he pulled off the road, got out of the car and wrote with his finger in the dust on the back of his car the word
elevator
Now here's the interesting thing about that. The book that that word became was Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Note that he didn't write "chocolate factory".
He probably thought, at first, that he was going to write a book about a magic elevator. (And he did, later. He wrote Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.) But in the journey from its perfection inside your head to the confusion on the page, the idea you originally had often turns out not to be the main part of the story at all, but just a minor part. Or sometimes it has to be removed utterly, because by insisting on keeping it in you're really ruining a good story.
A lot of stories get abandoned because the idea that they started out as just doesn't seem to be working. The thing to do is to be willing to abandon the idea and develop its adjuncts instead. (Where was the elevator? Well it was in this big chocolate factory. Yes? Tell us about this factory. Well it belonged to this guy...)
Hitting The Wall
When I have an idea, there's no need to outline. I just sit down and start writing. And writing, and... writing. And... nah, this is stupid. It doesn't work. Here you have the character relying on iguana-blood for her nutritional needs, and she's the one who's supposed to lead the glorious iguana revolution? Damn.
That's when I start outlining. I do it with index cards, and different colored Sharpies. Each character gets his/her own color. I write out the events of the story as they pertain to the the main character on index cards (up to a dozen of 'em) and hang them on the wall going down from ceiling to floor.
Then I pick a different color pen for each central character and write down their main events and go down the wall. So I have several different colored columns of storyline. If things are happening to different characters simultaneously, the cards get put side by side. If things don't add up then I move cards around. If a character isn't involved in the action at any point, then s/he doesn't get a card for that part of the story.
(If I'm doing a historical novel, I also make a calendar for the time in which the story is set, add in significant world events and any weather data I can find, cut it into strips and line it up with the index cards.)
I do not plan the ending. At this point, I always believe I've plotted 3/4 of the story. (It later turns out to have been half.) Then I start writing again. I write until I've gone through all the index cards right down to the floor, except for the ones that no longer make sense by the time I get to them.
Then I stop writing.
Finding the Center
Neil Gaiman says that you write until you find the center of the story, which is the end. Thinking about this can be helpful in figuring out what the end of the story is. Often it is quite different from what you thought it would be. But if you're like me, you have to write for quite a while before you figure out what the center of the story is. And much of what I write later has to be discarded.
Once I've written everything that was on the wall, I've usually got some idea where the center of the story is and how it must end.
Then I take the index cards off the wall, set them aside, and make new index cards for the remainder of the book. (This is where I find out I was only halfway done.) Then I start writing again, from the ceiling down to the floor.
Deleting the Beginning
At this point there is one thing that always needs to go and another thing that usually does. The first is my fascinating backstory. Yes, I know the whole history of human vs. iguana oppression, and it is ugly. It's also not gonna get me outta the slush pile, so out it goes. Sigh.
The original idea gets scrapped if it's no longer what the story is about-- if I'm obviously clinging to it for sentimental reasons. Instead, the story is now about how a human and an iguana struggle to find a place for their love in an intolerant world.
Ew. Of course, the revolution can still be a backdrop... but only if it still serves the story.
In fact, anything at all that doesn't serve the story has to go. Nine pages of dialogue in which the characters are clearly waiting in the laundromat for the rinse cycle just because the author doesn't have a clue what happens next have to go.
(By the way, you probably already knew this, but many 19th century novelists, including Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe, had their work published in serials. Because of this the POV may change halfway through, or characters may appear to be younger at the end of the story than at the beginning, plus there are pages and pages where the story is put on hold for a political or religious rant.
They didn't have delete buttons back then, and there was no way to change earlier chapters when they had already been printed and sold. You can't get away with that kinda thing anymore.)
Anyway that's how I slog through. I'd be interested to hear how you do it.
Write On! will be a regular Thursday feature (8 pm ET) until it isn't. Be sure to check out other great lit'ry diaries like:
sarahnity's books by kossacks on Tuesday nights
plf515's What Are You Reading? on Wednesday mornings.
cfk's bookflurries
on Wednesday nights.
Here are some brief interviews with novelists about how they write. Kinda interesting. I particularly care for M.T. Anderson on the subject of writer's block:
"Sometimes it's helpful to analyze what's wrong, to ask why it is that I don’t feel enthusiastic about what has to happen next. I ask myself if I can skip over the part that I appear to dread. I ask myself if perhaps there's another angle I could take, or if there's some detail that might reinvest the situation with interest for me.