Folk Friday and middling

Friday again. This week has gone by with the speed of lightning. I’m waiting for my students to arrive, so I thought I’d better turn my attention to Folk Friday.

I’m smack dab in the middle of Shattered right now. Had a good writing evening last night, got the first scene transition in Chapter 10 worked out. Not a huge number of words, but a roadblock out of the way. I think the next couple of chapters will go quickly.

So far, the middle of a book has been the most difficult part for me. I start quickly, full of the momentum of my new characters, and with an idea of the ending clear in my mind. Then I hit chapter eight or nine and the flow of words slows to a trickle. I know where I’m going, but which of the countless possible routes will I take? Do I need to go back and add plot threads to keep the middle from sagging? Do I need to throw in a twist that will take my characters in a completely different direction?

I know this is a common problem, especially with writers who are pantsers like me. With McShannon’s Chance, I solved it by writing the end and working backwards. Eventually the two halves met in the middle. Once I allowed myself to stop trying to write linearly, ideas started popping into my mind to fill the void.

Authors who can plan their plot in detail – and then follow it! – amaze me. So do authors who write scenes in no particular order. There are as many ways to deal with a book’s sagging middle as there are authors. Some use a collage or storyboard. I’ve tried collaging and enjoyed it, but didn’t find it particularly helpful as a writing tool as I have a strong visual image of my characters and setting from the beginning, and end up simply looking for pictures to fit that image. Perhaps I’ll experiment with a storyboard. Writers of blogland, how do you deal with the middle of a story? Anyone have any innovative ideas to share?

Oh, yes, folk Friday! Last week, an RWAC chapter mate of mine, Carolyn Laurie, posted a wonderful video on Facebook of Raylene Rankin, Cindy Church and Susan Crowe performing together in Alberta. It’s been a while since I heard three such wonderful voices that blend together so well. Enjoy!

Dialogue and Layering and Stuff

I’m working on Chapter 10 of Shattered, where Alice and Liam tentatively decide to take a chance on a relationship. The chapter involves a lot of dialogue between them, and with Alice’s family. When this happens, I often handle it by just writing the dialogue, omitting the thoughts and body language that go with it. Afterwards I go back and fill in the narrative.

I find this useful in a couple of ways. If I have trouble adding thoughts or actions, it makes me take a second look at the dialogue. Would Liam really say that, and if so, why? What does Alice really mean by her reply? Leaving the narrative until later also lets me write the dialogue quickly, without stalling on the exact words to describe what someone is thinking or angsting over whether I have too much narrative or not enough. I still do that when I go back to write the next layer, but having the dialogue already in place makes it easier.

Then I often find myself going back to add a third layer – emotion. I usually don’t include a lot in my first draft. I used to think that having a rather flat, unemotional first draft was a weakness, but now I understand that it’s part of my process. First I have to tell the story.

In a recent blog post, my RWAC chapter mate Donna Alward used the term ‘discovery draft’. That’s what this run-through of Shattered is becoming. Writers of blogland, how do you approach a first draft? Do you write a lot of words and scenes and then prune later? Do you layer like I do? Do you sometimes write dialogue only?

P.S. on my fitness program – got my monthly weigh and measure done yesterday, the first one. This is my baseline. Instead of updating each week, I’m going to wait until my next weigh and measure in November. I’m making my workouts and watching what I eat, so at this point I’m pleased. Slow but steady is the plan.

The Plot Thickens

I finished Chapter 8 of Shattered last night. It’s leading me to the middle of the story, where all the plot threads start to interweave. Now I have to decide just how that’s going to happen – or rather, being a pantser, I have to sit at the keyboard and see how it all plays out.

One of the reasons being a pantser creates angst for me is that I’m just not a linear thinker. The past, present and future of my characters don’t always come to me in the right order. I come up with an idea, and it sprouts offshoots that lead me in a dozen different directions. I want to follow them all, even though I know most of them will come to dead end. Of course all those extra words can still be useful, but sometimes I wish I didn’t write quite so many of them.

Then there’s those secondary characters. I fell in love with Nathan Munroe, Trey’s nemesis in McShannon’s Chance, and now I’m smitten with Nolan, Liam’s older brother in Shattered. That doesn’t mean I love Liam any less as a hero, but Nolan’s backstory keeps cluttering up my mind. He’s a harbour pilot, once a merchant seaman with the proverbial girl in every port. He makes me think of Stan Rogers’ song, Lockkeeper:

‘She wears bougainvillea blossoms/ You pluck them from her hair and toss them to the tide/ Sweep her in your arms and carry her inside/ Her sighs catch on your shoulder, her moonlit eyes grow warm and wiser through her tears/ And I say ‘how can you stand to leave her for a year?”

But Nolan, unlike the sailor in the song, chose to settle down with his Annie, a down-to-earth farm girl from outside Truro. How did they meet? Was she working or visiting friends in Halifax when Nolan came home from one of his voyages, perhaps with his heart broken by a woman like the ‘tropic maid’ in Lockkeeper? Or did he go to sea in the first place to nurse a broken heart?

Another prequel in the making? Perhaps, but right now Nolan is a distraction. Maybe if I politely ask him to go away...but not too far away...

I refuse to think of my convoluted way of thinking as bad for my writing. After all, I’ve read and loved many novels where several plotlines are interwoven and secondary characters are fully developed. I’m thinking of Melanie Wilkes and Gerald and Ellen O’Hara in Gone With The Wind. It’s arguable that the story would have been tighter if we’d been told a lot less about Scarlett’s parents and Ashley’s wife, but would it have been as rich? No. Judith James’ masterfully plotted historicals – her latest, A Libertine’s Kiss, is amazing – come to mind as well. I love a full-figured plot.

But I’m trying to create a good, believable romantic arc for Liam and Alice and tell their story in under 80000 words, without writing 160000. The middle is always the toughest part of a book for me, so perhaps my distractibility is really avoidance behaviour. Writers of blogland, do any of you do this to yourselves?
And does anyone have any good research material on what it was like to be a merchant seaman at the turn of the last century, in Nolan’s time?

I know, I know. Liam and Alice first.