Out of Chaos, a Novel is Born

NOVEL WRITER'S LESSON, December 2006

OUT OF CHAOS, A NOVEL IS BORN
by zentao

So you've got 60,000 words of start, new start number two, new start number fifty-one, your revised start number twelve, rewritten start number twenty-three, edited start number thirteen, and non-start number five. Plus, you have another 100,000 words of "somewhere in the middle." ...And none of it agrees.

You've got Teragib who started off as Larry who was supposed to be a girl, and you've got Maryda who started off as Samantha who was supposed to be Keith, your hero. Then there's Pilo who wasn't somebody you even thought was in this book, but he appeared for about 20,000 words.

You thought this book was taking place on Earth, in the year NOW, but then an orange sky showed up at night, and it rains light when three sunsets coincide. Plus the people's houses are made of floating, hollow rocks, but they all drive 1940's Fords. And you still can't find your "bad guy."

Can any of it be salvaged? Yes. Can it be a book? Some of it. The trick is distancing yourself from both your "baby" and yourself, then sorting it into imaginary, real world, or virtual piles. But before you start sorting, you've got to make some decisions.

Remember WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, and HOW from English way back when? There's your key to the answers you need to know, though not necessarily in that order.

DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM YOUR CHAOS

Put away all that welling, emotional feeling that translates into "I want to write this book" — the panic and frustration. Get out a notebook or word processor/spreadsheet interface, secure a pen or a keyboard, and let's begin.

What is your story about?

In approximately fifty to one-hundred words, jot down WHAT your story is about. Not all the details, not WHO is in the book, not where or when it takes place, or anything else. Just the basic PREMISE of your STORY.

Often when I ask a writer to do this, what bubbles out of them is this overwhelming mish-mash of run-on "characters doing this, and this happens, but this happens, too, and then they do this, and there might be this that happens because...and this might not happen, but maybe it does... ."

STOP.

One more time: WHAT is your story about?

EXAMPLE:

Two men venture into Africa in the 1940's and find themselves plunged into some wildly strange world where everything on earth has changed. (Hence the orange sky, the light rain, the floating rock houses, and the vintage Fords, all in one fell swoop.) There they meet a woman who one of the men falls in love with, but the other one despises because he just knows that she's got some ulterior motive that doesn't bode well for either him or his partner.

Okay, what we've just built is a START of figuring out "WHAT your story is about," ad-libbed out of all the above flotsam with which I, tongue-in-cheek, began this lesson. See what a bit of distance can do? Organize and distill your story elements down into a cohesive stream of "what happens." Once you have that, you can begin to FIND OUT HOW — the "what-if's" — but not until you rekindle your memory of what already exists.

In your mind, sift through your scenes. Find the ones that really seem to make strong visuals in your mind, that you want or know belong in the story just as they are or maybe with a bit of adjustment. Find the ones that are "right." What you are doing (or supposed to be doing) is consciously "making note" of them in your mind, NOT ON PAPER OR COMPUTER INTERFACE.

Now we begin.

DECIDE

Make decisions ABOUT your story. DISCOVER YOUR BOOK BY USING WHAT-IF'S

The most common failing once a writer has a bunch of scenes and restarts is that they fail to make a decision about HOW it all happens and HOW it happens next. You might not know all the answers yet, and I guarantee you won't at this stage, but you can FIND OUT. You can, even right now in the midst of your chaos, list several possibilities...and will. (By the way, yes, using this process, you can even build "The alternate story" or "stories" if you really want to go to some startling lengths...or you can use these alternatives for developing a series of books. But let's stick to ONE book — THIS book.)

Using our example:

How did the two men come to be together?

How did they wind up in Africa?

Where are they from originally?

What were they doing when they found themselves in this strange world?

Now, begin answering the questions that make up the elements of the HOW CAN THIS BE suggested in the story set-up you wrote in "What is Your Story About." The above set of questions used my example: Two men venture into Africa in the 1940's and find themselves plunged into some wildly strange world where everything on earth has changed. Do yours.

MOVING FORWARD

Let's examine the juxtaposition and figure out who our bad guy, bad gal, or bad situation is.

Is the woman really bad? Maybe, maybe not.

Is the man who loves her really bad? Maybe, maybe not.

Is the man who hates the woman really bad? Maybe, maybe not.

If the woman is bad, then who and/or what defeats her? Or does she win? What are her weaknesses and strengths? If the woman isn't bad, then why does the man who hates her think she is?

If the man who loves her is bad, then how come? And what makes us find out he's bad? If he isn't bad, then how come he seems bad in the fight scene with his...brother?

AH. Discovery. The two men are brothers. And they have a fight.

What about the other guy? Is he bad? Is he actually the villain? If so, what is his actual motive in the story? Or, if he isn't bad, does he only hate the woman because she is stealing his brother? Is there some other reason?

HIDDEN DISCOVERY: Pay attention in the above stream of "asking." Underlying it, we have just FOUND our bad guys. Each character is bad because the other character is working against his/her desires. We might not know what those desires are or what another character is doing to thwart them, but we'll get there. What we did do is to find the "bad guy" or "several baddies." That is all the antagonistic force(s) you need for a book, so now you can stop sweating that particular problem. Or, if you REALLY need or want a different bad guy(s), you can figure out one, two, three or more by doing more DISCOVERY.

HOW CAN IT BE — MORE DECISIONS

What KIND of story are you writing? Genre and elements of all the varied genres comprising your book can offer tools that help. Are you writing:

Something very crossover, experimental, and/or alternative?
Is it Science Fiction? (That would make it easy, but, no, we don't want SF.)
Is it Fantasy? (Ah, no thanks.)
Is it more Slipstream? (What the hell is that?)
How about, we're just writing a story and we don't know the genre?

Right. That's works, you say. You aren't sure. Onward.

But, WAIT A MINUTE, say you. "I just figured out what kind of story it is. It's an action-adventure Romance."

GOOD. You've just made yet another discovery about WHAT YOUR STORY IS AND ISN'T, which leads to allowing us to glue elements together in a meaningful way because, IF we know the genre or the several genres that comprise our story, we know what plot elements are needed. We also now know something about The End. We might not KNOW the end yet exactly, but we know that our protags will win or lose in some daring-do and that lovers will either get togehter, not get together, or extend the question into the next book...if we write a next book.

YET EVEN MORE DECISIONS

Does the man who loves the woman get together with her? Do they fail to get together?

Does the brother who hates the woman actually wind up falling in love with her and she with him? Do they get together instead? Or not? Maybe the man who originally loves her, keeps her, despite the woman having fallen in love with his brother? What if the woman loves both of them and won't marry either one? Or maybe the woman (or one of the men) dies... .

As you can see, we could go on here forever with the WHAT-IF's. The mechanism is called DISCOVERY, and you do it by ASKING QUESTIONS BASED ON WHAT YOU KNOW AND WHAT IS SUGGESTED, MAKING DECISIONS based upon what you have already written to isolate the actual story you want to write, consolidating it in your mind so you can begin to work again. Once you have enough answers, then you can start with a refreshingly clear idea of:

WHAT YOUR STORY IS ABOUT,
WHAT HAPPENS,
WHO IT HAPPENS TO (all three characters in the case study here),
HOW IT ALL COMES TO PASS,
WHERE IT TAKES PLACE,
WHEN IT TAKES PLACE,
WHY IT TAKES PLACE, and
HOW IT ENDS
...OR DOES IT?

What's that you say? You want to know about THIS STORY?

You decide.

Lesson TOC (Table of Contents)...4

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