S.Z. Attwell's Blog
November 2, 2020
Reflections on writing my (first) novel
October 31, 2020
Hello!
It’s almost NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I’m debating whether to write novel 3 while also trying to get novel 2 (the second half of my epic sci-fi series Aestus) ready for publication.
I’m very tempted. In the meantime, I have been remiss in updating this blog and I apologize. It’s been a whirlwind – from writing books 1 and 2 to editing to figuring out the steep learning curve of publishing. I’m getting there, I hope, but it’s been a lot of work. Add in the fact that I work full-time and just took a 10-week intensive CELTA course (TEFL instructor certification through the University of Cambridge), and you have one very exhausted author.
I’ve been thinking for a while about what I wanted to use this blog for. To be honest, I think of it as a space for me to write about the writing process itself – the giant effort to write a novel, for example. And that’s not something I’ve been able to sit down and reflect on in full. Hence the delay. But now I’m ready to try. In honor of NaNoWriMo, here’s a longish spoiler-free reflection on writing my first novel, Aestus, Book 1: The City, which you can find here.
From idea to novel
I was not exactly planning to write an action-filled futuristic novel. I’ve always been more of a historical-fiction person (I have half a YA-esque plot on pirates in Boston written out, just saying). But offline, I’m a professional science writer and am very concerned about climate change; if you’ve read my writing guide on Goodreads, you probably know that my book began via a very frustrated me standing in a bus tunnel on a boiling hot thunderstorm-y evening waiting for a (late) bus, ~95F and ~100% humidity due to the storm. I started thinking about what humanity might do if the world became (God forbid) essentially uninhabitable. What if, I thought, this bus were coming to take me down into the earth at the end of my work day? Into an underground city? What might go wrong on such a trip? What if the bus broke down? What if there were clawed creatures that snuck into the tunnels at night? (I have a vivid imagination.)
I waited for the bus, went home, and started thinking about what that might look like.
The first bit I wrote was, in one sense, originally an exercise in action-writing, which was super intimidating because I had never written action. I wanted to try to capture both action and terror – the feeling of being hunted down by a monstrous creature in a dark tunnel with nowhere to run, assuming the heat and lack of water don’t kill you first.
I drew on some related experience (not with being chased in the dark, exactly, but something like that): I’ve been in a legitimate pitch-black tunnel once, on the Hiawatha Bike Trail in Idaho/Montana, and it was terrifying and cool at the same time. You wobble along with your bike light (they don’t provide them, so bring your own), and you can hear water dripping but you can’t see the ground too well – don’t veer into the mini-river – it’s pitch-black and everything is sort of reflective because of the water on the stone tunnel walls. It’s very cold…and it’s two miles long.
My stupid friends decided to make eerie shrieking monster noises as we rode our bikes. This was funny…at first.
Now imagine you may or may not be being chased by a creature with glowing eyes and claws. In the heat, where water is an issue. And your bus has broken down and you have to descend about 300-500 feet into the earth…while trying not to fall into a giant pit left behind when your City was constructed.
I thought it was a cool idea, and generally wanted to write further about the idea of an underground city and climate change, so I started plotting out a story. I wrote six chapters or so and posted them on a blog; I had no idea how to expand the thing, but figured I’d probably update as I went. In the meantime, I asked my friends (a bit apprehensively) to read it. (Again, no action-writing experience!)
They liked it…but I didn’t realize how much they liked it until one friend basically said to me, “Look. I need more than one chapter a month.”
Now I felt obligated to write (thanks, friend – you know who you are!). So I sat down and started actually plotting things out in a lot more detail. But I realized very quickly that there was the potential to make this into a much much bigger novel…so I took it off my blog, instructed said friends to wipe their memories (haha), and started writing.
NaNoWriMo started around that time. I decided to give it a go – why not? – and actually attempted to prepare, even purchasing a NaNoWriMo book, which is a very meta concept. I ignored the fact that I had already started on my novel (it’s acceptable now/doesn’t break the rules!) and just started writing.
In case you’re curious, I used a program called Wavemaker, which I hope still exists, because it was amazing. The only issue was the lack of spellcheck. But it gave a really focused (and free!) writing experience. I also used my Chromebook, which I do 80% of my writing on, and Werdsmith, where I do the rest. [Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with any products I mention on my blog unless specifically stated. Use at your own risk.]
Characters, tropes, and lighting the bagel-toaster on fire
The biggest thing for me with characters is that I have to like them or at least understand them. Their decisions have to be logical, if not rational.
And they should be realistic, not trope-y.
More than that, though, I truly care about my characters. I have no interest in characters who are tropes, so to speak – the Best Friend or the Old Mentor or whoever who are stuck into the plot but are very flat characters. Obviously, characters fulfill plot functions, but I also need to care about them. If I care about a character, I am willing to read pages about them doing just about anything. Literally. If I don’t, they’d better be saving the city from a disaster, and even then I’ll probably forget their names once the book is over, which is probably not how you want your novel to be remembered.
My main character was the hardest part of writing (at first, anyway), especially as I came up with her knowing very little about the plot/world or, therefore, her. Coming up with a main character (MC) that I actually like is always a challenge. Coming up with a woman as a main character is particularly hard…because there’s so much baggage that comes along with women as characters. They’re either overly (and overtly) sexy or “quirky” (ew) or Different from Other Women (what’s that supposed to mean?) or “damaged” in some way (trauma, specifically to do with men). Notice a theme? This all has to do with their relationship to men. I just wanted a character who was interesting and intelligent and accomplished and whatnot, nothing to do with men or how men perceived her.
I named her Jossey Sokol, and she’s a visibly-scarred survivor of an Onlar attack when she was ten, during which she lost her brother. Now, fifteen years later, she’s a solar Engineer, secretly terrified of the dark tunnels through which she must pass twice a day to work on the equally-terrifying surface, because it’s the only career she’s ever wanted to have.
Basically, I wanted Jossey to be a strong character who didn’t rely on her relationship with men to make her interesting.
(I take this to mean that I accomplished that goal!)
However, I quickly ran into the (obvious) idea that she couldn’t really do everything herself (I mean, stopping a bus from hurtling into the pit when one has no experience with driving a bus generally requires help, for example)…so I grudgingly allowed a man to assist, haha. (I joke – several of the main characters are men. I just didn’t want the story to go the way of so many others and have romance be the main focus.)
(Of course, plans often mean next to nothing: I ended up coming up with another character who ruined my carefully-laid plans with Emotions and Feelings and Stuff…but who I think immediately improved the story, and is now one of my favorites in the “cast.” But I digress.)
Back to the notion of non-tropetastic characters:
Gavin, Mr. Handsome Patrol Commander. On the surface, he’s ideal in many ways…and he’s legitimately a sweet guy, but he has quite a few blind spots, to say the least. If anything, he’s flawed because of how near-ideal he is.
I enjoy playing with contrasts, and he’s very much a study in contrasts. That said, he’s not specifically constructed in order to demonstrate those traits or look at contrasts or whatever. He’s just him, the slightly-doofy-but-also-terrifying overprotective “bodyguard” of sorts who used to be Tark’s best friend and who promised to be there for Jossey the way he’d been there for Tark. He and Jossey are now adults and he’s still there for her. He drives her nuts with his overprotectiveness and his Handsome Commander near-arrogance…their relationship is not exactly smooth at times.
That said, he’s as realistic as I could make him, considering how admired he is in the City and how a large percentage of the female population is infatuated with him. People like this do exist, haha. I take it as a personal challenge to push the limits of Mary Sue-dom, but I also happen to know quite a few people in real life who really are [geniuses/amazing athletes/what-have-you] and I don’t feel bothered by putting characters like Gavin or others into the story. If you do so, just make sure they have flaws. Said geniuses that I know have also demonstrated otherwise at times (examples include lighting our bagel-toaster on fire after buttering the bagel first, which while efficient was also a Bad Idea). Ah, my youth. As for the series having villains, and them veering close to trope territory, I have quite a bit I could say about the status quo and economics, but I should save that for my commentary once the series ends.
Dystopia and world-building
Back to the dystopian aspect. In terms of speculative fiction, I wanted Jossey to figure out the secret(s) via a series of adventures. (I use that word in the dystopian sense; the reality of the plot is significantly more complex and less trope-y than that. Hopefully more on that later.) The fun part (and the real adventure, barring of course being pursued in dark tunnels by a clawed creature) began once she joined Patrol, the military arm of the City. As a child, as mentioned, Jossey had snuck aboveground at night with her older brother Tark to see the moon, a trip that ended disastrously when one of the monstrous creatures known as the Onlar found them. Jossey was left with terrible scars and a damaged leg. Tark disappeared. That’s where my book begins…and then it takes the reader to fifteen years later, when Jossey’s solar-engineering-crew bus breaks down in the dark tunnel and she has to save 30+ people from the creature that’s pursuing them. After that second traumatic experience, her uncle asks her to join Patrol on a special engineering assignment; she says no for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, her Patrol-commander friend, Gavin, is on an aboveground night mission when one of his recruits stumbles (literally) across a child’s skeleton…near where Tark had disappeared. Jossey does a 180 and all but demands to be allowed on Patrol.
Patrol was really fun to write, if also somewhat intimidating – the closest I have to “military experience” is the Boy Scouts of America. I worked in the forest for two summers at a summer camp, helping with shooting sports, among other things. But I got a good sense of the camaraderie, the pecking order, etc. For example, Thompson and Ellis, the two kind-of sweet-natured, fiercely loyal doofuses (mostly Thompson, to be honest), started out as vaguely stock-esque characters and grew into two of my favorites in the series. (Can’t tell you why, but after book 2, Thompson is solidly in the running for top five favorite characters.)
The tech was fun, as was the world-building in general. Without spoiling anything (as much as possible), the City is an underground module system of sorts built to withstand severe climate change. The aboveground world is deeply inhospitable during the day. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. I started to think of things like how the Onlar (the monstrous creatures) could move around during the day, how the City would power itself/get water/etc., and more. What would likely happen if someone got trapped up aboveground, for example?
Thoughts on plot-writing
The plot quickly became far more complex than I had anticipated, and I ended up using Google Slides to keep everything in order (I had one for tech, for example; one for political motivations…).
In constructing the plot, I specifically focused on motivations and reactions. One thing I’ve learned about writing drama is that it really comes down to people’s motivations and how they perceive others’, whether that’s on a friendship level (“why did she say that about me?”) or a full-on battle-strategy game-theory level. (Both exist to an extent in this series.)
There’s a TV show I watch, for instance, where the simple tension between two brothers, one of whom wants power that the other seems to have without trying, plus a single apparently-minor incident, spirals ever outward into a massive series of events that threaten to take down empires. It’s all logical, each step building on the previous ones, all the threads weaving together, and it amazed me how such a simple structure could unfold into something so exquisite. It reminds me of crystals – search “bismuth crystals” if you want to see something amazing.
Anyway. I used to be of the mindset that I needed to plot Signposts: Or, Things that the Characters Need to Aim For. Yes and no. Obviously there are goals, and there are external factors/limitations/etc. for the characters, but ultimately the plot is characters reacting to their circumstances and trying to plan ahead as best they can. When I started to think of the plot as slowly-unfolding consequences of decisions, I was able to let the book all but “write itself.”
It very quickly became much bigger than I’d intended, in fact. I ended up with a notebook where I tried to write down all the things that I had to complete in each chapter for the story to make sense/not have plot holes/etc. It was helpful as a roadmap, but it was very different than the roadmap I’d originally set when I started writing, other than the general major plot points. It was almost like I’d built up momentum for the story with the early decisions/actions of the characters, and now things were proceeding under their own steam, in a sense.
Before I spoil anything…
I am at a loss, speaking of, for how to proceed from here, because I don’t think there’s much else I can say without giving away the plot. So here’s an invitation to read it for yourself!
Link (ebook and paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FD6TVLJ
A summary:
Finally, reviews:
I will probably do a second blog post once Aestus, Book 2: The Colony is released, which I hope will be in December – I just don’t want to spoil anything! (Join my mailing list for updates at https://szattwell.com/!)
Happy reading!
Sabrina (S. Z. Attwell)
Hello!
It’s almost NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I’m debating whether to write novel 3 while also trying to get novel 2 (the second half of my epic sci-fi series Aestus) ready for publication.
I’m very tempted. In the meantime, I have been remiss in updating this blog and I apologize. It’s been a whirlwind – from writing books 1 and 2 to editing to figuring out the steep learning curve of publishing. I’m getting there, I hope, but it’s been a lot of work. Add in the fact that I work full-time and just took a 10-week intensive CELTA course (TEFL instructor certification through the University of Cambridge), and you have one very exhausted author.
I’ve been thinking for a while about what I wanted to use this blog for. To be honest, I think of it as a space for me to write about the writing process itself – the giant effort to write a novel, for example. And that’s not something I’ve been able to sit down and reflect on in full. Hence the delay. But now I’m ready to try. In honor of NaNoWriMo, here’s a longish spoiler-free reflection on writing my first novel, Aestus, Book 1: The City, which you can find here.
An underground city, built centuries ago to ride out the devastating heat. A society under attack. And a young solar engineer whose skills may be the key to saving her city…if she doesn’t get herself killed first.
–From the synopsis of Aestus, Book 1: The City
From idea to novel
I was not exactly planning to write an action-filled futuristic novel. I’ve always been more of a historical-fiction person (I have half a YA-esque plot on pirates in Boston written out, just saying). But offline, I’m a professional science writer and am very concerned about climate change; if you’ve read my writing guide on Goodreads, you probably know that my book began via a very frustrated me standing in a bus tunnel on a boiling hot thunderstorm-y evening waiting for a (late) bus, ~95F and ~100% humidity due to the storm. I started thinking about what humanity might do if the world became (God forbid) essentially uninhabitable. What if, I thought, this bus were coming to take me down into the earth at the end of my work day? Into an underground city? What might go wrong on such a trip? What if the bus broke down? What if there were clawed creatures that snuck into the tunnels at night? (I have a vivid imagination.)
I waited for the bus, went home, and started thinking about what that might look like.
The first bit I wrote was, in one sense, originally an exercise in action-writing, which was super intimidating because I had never written action. I wanted to try to capture both action and terror – the feeling of being hunted down by a monstrous creature in a dark tunnel with nowhere to run, assuming the heat and lack of water don’t kill you first.
I drew on some related experience (not with being chased in the dark, exactly, but something like that): I’ve been in a legitimate pitch-black tunnel once, on the Hiawatha Bike Trail in Idaho/Montana, and it was terrifying and cool at the same time. You wobble along with your bike light (they don’t provide them, so bring your own), and you can hear water dripping but you can’t see the ground too well – don’t veer into the mini-river – it’s pitch-black and everything is sort of reflective because of the water on the stone tunnel walls. It’s very cold…and it’s two miles long.
My stupid friends decided to make eerie shrieking monster noises as we rode our bikes. This was funny…at first.
Now imagine you may or may not be being chased by a creature with glowing eyes and claws. In the heat, where water is an issue. And your bus has broken down and you have to descend about 300-500 feet into the earth…while trying not to fall into a giant pit left behind when your City was constructed.
I thought it was a cool idea, and generally wanted to write further about the idea of an underground city and climate change, so I started plotting out a story. I wrote six chapters or so and posted them on a blog; I had no idea how to expand the thing, but figured I’d probably update as I went. In the meantime, I asked my friends (a bit apprehensively) to read it. (Again, no action-writing experience!)
They liked it…but I didn’t realize how much they liked it until one friend basically said to me, “Look. I need more than one chapter a month.”
Now I felt obligated to write (thanks, friend – you know who you are!). So I sat down and started actually plotting things out in a lot more detail. But I realized very quickly that there was the potential to make this into a much much bigger novel…so I took it off my blog, instructed said friends to wipe their memories (haha), and started writing.
NaNoWriMo started around that time. I decided to give it a go – why not? – and actually attempted to prepare, even purchasing a NaNoWriMo book, which is a very meta concept. I ignored the fact that I had already started on my novel (it’s acceptable now/doesn’t break the rules!) and just started writing.
In case you’re curious, I used a program called Wavemaker, which I hope still exists, because it was amazing. The only issue was the lack of spellcheck. But it gave a really focused (and free!) writing experience. I also used my Chromebook, which I do 80% of my writing on, and Werdsmith, where I do the rest. [Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with any products I mention on my blog unless specifically stated. Use at your own risk.]
Characters, tropes, and lighting the bagel-toaster on fire
The biggest thing for me with characters is that I have to like them or at least understand them. Their decisions have to be logical, if not rational.
And they should be realistic, not trope-y.
More than that, though, I truly care about my characters. I have no interest in characters who are tropes, so to speak – the Best Friend or the Old Mentor or whoever who are stuck into the plot but are very flat characters. Obviously, characters fulfill plot functions, but I also need to care about them. If I care about a character, I am willing to read pages about them doing just about anything. Literally. If I don’t, they’d better be saving the city from a disaster, and even then I’ll probably forget their names once the book is over, which is probably not how you want your novel to be remembered.
My main character was the hardest part of writing (at first, anyway), especially as I came up with her knowing very little about the plot/world or, therefore, her. Coming up with a main character (MC) that I actually like is always a challenge. Coming up with a woman as a main character is particularly hard…because there’s so much baggage that comes along with women as characters. They’re either overly (and overtly) sexy or “quirky” (ew) or Different from Other Women (what’s that supposed to mean?) or “damaged” in some way (trauma, specifically to do with men). Notice a theme? This all has to do with their relationship to men. I just wanted a character who was interesting and intelligent and accomplished and whatnot, nothing to do with men or how men perceived her.
I named her Jossey Sokol, and she’s a visibly-scarred survivor of an Onlar attack when she was ten, during which she lost her brother. Now, fifteen years later, she’s a solar Engineer, secretly terrified of the dark tunnels through which she must pass twice a day to work on the equally-terrifying surface, because it’s the only career she’s ever wanted to have.
Basically, I wanted Jossey to be a strong character who didn’t rely on her relationship with men to make her interesting.
“- Female lead that exists comfortably outside of the usual stereotypes” – A. Behlum, reviewer
(I take this to mean that I accomplished that goal!)
However, I quickly ran into the (obvious) idea that she couldn’t really do everything herself (I mean, stopping a bus from hurtling into the pit when one has no experience with driving a bus generally requires help, for example)…so I grudgingly allowed a man to assist, haha. (I joke – several of the main characters are men. I just didn’t want the story to go the way of so many others and have romance be the main focus.)
(Of course, plans often mean next to nothing: I ended up coming up with another character who ruined my carefully-laid plans with Emotions and Feelings and Stuff…but who I think immediately improved the story, and is now one of my favorites in the “cast.” But I digress.)
Back to the notion of non-tropetastic characters:
Gavin, Mr. Handsome Patrol Commander. On the surface, he’s ideal in many ways…and he’s legitimately a sweet guy, but he has quite a few blind spots, to say the least. If anything, he’s flawed because of how near-ideal he is.
I enjoy playing with contrasts, and he’s very much a study in contrasts. That said, he’s not specifically constructed in order to demonstrate those traits or look at contrasts or whatever. He’s just him, the slightly-doofy-but-also-terrifying overprotective “bodyguard” of sorts who used to be Tark’s best friend and who promised to be there for Jossey the way he’d been there for Tark. He and Jossey are now adults and he’s still there for her. He drives her nuts with his overprotectiveness and his Handsome Commander near-arrogance…their relationship is not exactly smooth at times.
“Jossey half-smiled. How many women in the City would be beyond thrilled to find Commander Tskoulis passed out in their hospital room, flowers in hand, waiting for them to awaken?
She almost laughed at the thought.
It was sweet of him. She just wished he wouldn’t be so…so…”
—Aestus, Book 1: The City
That said, he’s as realistic as I could make him, considering how admired he is in the City and how a large percentage of the female population is infatuated with him. People like this do exist, haha. I take it as a personal challenge to push the limits of Mary Sue-dom, but I also happen to know quite a few people in real life who really are [geniuses/amazing athletes/what-have-you] and I don’t feel bothered by putting characters like Gavin or others into the story. If you do so, just make sure they have flaws. Said geniuses that I know have also demonstrated otherwise at times (examples include lighting our bagel-toaster on fire after buttering the bagel first, which while efficient was also a Bad Idea). Ah, my youth. As for the series having villains, and them veering close to trope territory, I have quite a bit I could say about the status quo and economics, but I should save that for my commentary once the series ends.
Dystopia and world-building
Back to the dystopian aspect. In terms of speculative fiction, I wanted Jossey to figure out the secret(s) via a series of adventures. (I use that word in the dystopian sense; the reality of the plot is significantly more complex and less trope-y than that. Hopefully more on that later.) The fun part (and the real adventure, barring of course being pursued in dark tunnels by a clawed creature) began once she joined Patrol, the military arm of the City. As a child, as mentioned, Jossey had snuck aboveground at night with her older brother Tark to see the moon, a trip that ended disastrously when one of the monstrous creatures known as the Onlar found them. Jossey was left with terrible scars and a damaged leg. Tark disappeared. That’s where my book begins…and then it takes the reader to fifteen years later, when Jossey’s solar-engineering-crew bus breaks down in the dark tunnel and she has to save 30+ people from the creature that’s pursuing them. After that second traumatic experience, her uncle asks her to join Patrol on a special engineering assignment; she says no for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, her Patrol-commander friend, Gavin, is on an aboveground night mission when one of his recruits stumbles (literally) across a child’s skeleton…near where Tark had disappeared. Jossey does a 180 and all but demands to be allowed on Patrol.
Patrol was really fun to write, if also somewhat intimidating – the closest I have to “military experience” is the Boy Scouts of America. I worked in the forest for two summers at a summer camp, helping with shooting sports, among other things. But I got a good sense of the camaraderie, the pecking order, etc. For example, Thompson and Ellis, the two kind-of sweet-natured, fiercely loyal doofuses (mostly Thompson, to be honest), started out as vaguely stock-esque characters and grew into two of my favorites in the series. (Can’t tell you why, but after book 2, Thompson is solidly in the running for top five favorite characters.)
The tech was fun, as was the world-building in general. Without spoiling anything (as much as possible), the City is an underground module system of sorts built to withstand severe climate change. The aboveground world is deeply inhospitable during the day. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. I started to think of things like how the Onlar (the monstrous creatures) could move around during the day, how the City would power itself/get water/etc., and more. What would likely happen if someone got trapped up aboveground, for example?
Thoughts on plot-writing
The plot quickly became far more complex than I had anticipated, and I ended up using Google Slides to keep everything in order (I had one for tech, for example; one for political motivations…).
In constructing the plot, I specifically focused on motivations and reactions. One thing I’ve learned about writing drama is that it really comes down to people’s motivations and how they perceive others’, whether that’s on a friendship level (“why did she say that about me?”) or a full-on battle-strategy game-theory level. (Both exist to an extent in this series.)
There’s a TV show I watch, for instance, where the simple tension between two brothers, one of whom wants power that the other seems to have without trying, plus a single apparently-minor incident, spirals ever outward into a massive series of events that threaten to take down empires. It’s all logical, each step building on the previous ones, all the threads weaving together, and it amazed me how such a simple structure could unfold into something so exquisite. It reminds me of crystals – search “bismuth crystals” if you want to see something amazing.
Anyway. I used to be of the mindset that I needed to plot Signposts: Or, Things that the Characters Need to Aim For. Yes and no. Obviously there are goals, and there are external factors/limitations/etc. for the characters, but ultimately the plot is characters reacting to their circumstances and trying to plan ahead as best they can. When I started to think of the plot as slowly-unfolding consequences of decisions, I was able to let the book all but “write itself.”
It very quickly became much bigger than I’d intended, in fact. I ended up with a notebook where I tried to write down all the things that I had to complete in each chapter for the story to make sense/not have plot holes/etc. It was helpful as a roadmap, but it was very different than the roadmap I’d originally set when I started writing, other than the general major plot points. It was almost like I’d built up momentum for the story with the early decisions/actions of the characters, and now things were proceeding under their own steam, in a sense.
Before I spoil anything…
I am at a loss, speaking of, for how to proceed from here, because I don’t think there’s much else I can say without giving away the plot. So here’s an invitation to read it for yourself!
Link (ebook and paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FD6TVLJ
A summary:
An underground city, built centuries ago to ride out the devastating heat. A society under attack. And a young solar engineer whose skills may be the key to saving her city…if she doesn’t get herself killed first.
When Jossey was ten, the creatures of the aboveground took her brother and left her for dead, with horrible scars. Now, years later, she’s a successful solar engineer, working to keep her underground city’s power running, but she’s never really recovered. After she saves dozens of people during a second attack, she is offered a top-secret assignment as a field Engineer with Patrol, but fear prevents her from taking it…until Patrol finds bones near where her brother disappeared.
She signs on and finds herself catapulted into a world that is far more dangerous, and requires far more of her, than she ever imagined. The creatures and the burning heat aboveground are not the only threats facing the City, and what she learns during her assignment could cost her her life: one of the greatest threats to the City may in fact lie within. With thousands of lives at stake, can she act in time?
Aestus is an adult dystopian science-fiction series set centuries after climate change has ravaged much of Earth. An epic story of vengeance, power, shifting loyalties, and survival that looks at just how far people will go to protect what they love, brought to you by science writer S.Z. Attwell, Aestus paints a picture of a world in which far too little has changed.
Finally, reviews:
“…masterful…on par with the best in the genre.” – A. R. Saida
“It’s hard to write a review of this book because I’m afraid that my description won’t do it justice. This is a phenomenal read….I can’t remember the last time I read a book this fast nor one that stayed with me for so long.” – Amanda W.
“Aestus is one of the best dystopian sci-fi novels I’ve read….beautifully vivid, with descriptions so specific and detailed that I felt like I was there alongside the characters, watching events unfold as if through my own eyes….It’s difficult to speak in much detail about Aestus without ruining one of the dozens of mysteries posited by the novel, but every page within the book’s covers is worth reading. Aestus has been the best fiction book I’ve read this year, and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone, even those not fans of the genre.” – R Sha
I will probably do a second blog post once Aestus, Book 2: The Colony is released, which I hope will be in December – I just don’t want to spoil anything! (Join my mailing list for updates at https://szattwell.com/!)
Happy reading!
Sabrina (S. Z. Attwell)
August 22, 2020
How I Wrote a Novel in Four Months, Part Four
Hello!
This is part four of my blog post on novel-writing. See parts one, two, and three.
Writing tips are in bold.
This work is free, in an attempt to help aspiring writers, but please don't share it without linking to it here/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART FOUR
If I've learned anything at all about writing, it's this: writing is like improvisation. If you make a mistake, make it fit within the lines of whatever else you're doing (see Plot Tar Pits for some exceptions). Some of my best characters have come out of me essentially thinking "oops, that wasn't my original plan...but you're fascinating."
When deciding to add something new: Does it fit the character(s)? Does it derail your plot's critical aspects? If your answers are yes and no, in that order, then "go for it" is likely my response.
The "easy" way to write: You need a general sense of your plot, and things that must happen for the story to make sense, then just kind of fill it in as it goes...making sure it makes sense for the characters. Be an actor. Act out your characters' lives on paper.
What I mean by that is this: my most useful tool, other than my computer, was a notebook I custom-designed with a quote (from moi) that said "Writing is acting, but on paper." Why? I'm getting inside the emotions and thoughts of a number of characters. I'm letting myself feel how they might feel, think how they might think, and having them act accordingly. I'm not just writing what they do. I'm getting a sense of who they are, and showing that to others. It's like method acting, but invisible.
It can be exhausting, and sometimes emotionally painful, and great.
"Great," you may say. "But you didn't answer my question. How did I get from 'I don't know how to make this plot into a book' to 'wait why is this already 350 pages long'?" In other words: "How do I make it long enough?"
I did answer it. What you should be asking yourself is not "how can I turn this idea into a long text," but "how can I tell this story, fully?"
Again - the journey. The length of a story doesn't matter so much. Did you tell it? All of it? (Mine passed the 350-page mark, then higher and higher until I began to, uh, worry. But I wrote it until it was complete. Editing is for later. Don't mash your story into a set of length guidelines. Tell the story. Let the audience get to know the characters, through those characters' actions and reactions. Write what is necessary. If it's too long, trim it later. If it's too short - are you really telling the entirety of the story? What else needs to be in there? Not filler (although it has its uses). Have you told the whole story? If not, don't hold back.
A note on writing for an audience
People often say they're afraid to have others read their writing. In my case, it's not due to fears about the quality; I've worked professionally with an editor for long enough that feedback is generally more useful than scary.
What's frightening to me is the other part, the emotional part.
I've said before that writing is acting, but on paper. I really think it's true. You have to do the emotional work, and then convey that to an audience; it's very personal, both in how the character acts and in how you depict how they act (and why or why not). I'm not surprised that writing is used as a form of therapy.
Because of that, there's generally a lot of the author on the page. It's easy for me to write fluff, cute scenes, even technical detail. Action is more difficult, but still doable. It's hard, though, to write things that have strong emotion, or suppressed emotion, because that requires me to dig down and express myself in ways I might not feel comfortable doing, especially to a potentially huge audience. To have to examine why I feel discomfort. To have to confess to myself why I had a character act or feel or think a certain way. Writing is an act of bravery in that sense, beyond just showing off technical skill. Be proud of that bravery.
Final thoughts
Write. Every day. As much as you can. Just start writing. Even if it's terrible. (You can often salvage good material from terrible writing.) Just write. If you're tired, if you're not in the mood, DO IT.
Think about the journey, not just the signposts pointing toward the end.
Just write.
-
© 2020 S. Z. Attwell
For more information, see my website: szattwell.com
This is part four of my blog post on novel-writing. See parts one, two, and three.
Writing tips are in bold.
This work is free, in an attempt to help aspiring writers, but please don't share it without linking to it here/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART FOUR
If I've learned anything at all about writing, it's this: writing is like improvisation. If you make a mistake, make it fit within the lines of whatever else you're doing (see Plot Tar Pits for some exceptions). Some of my best characters have come out of me essentially thinking "oops, that wasn't my original plan...but you're fascinating."
When deciding to add something new: Does it fit the character(s)? Does it derail your plot's critical aspects? If your answers are yes and no, in that order, then "go for it" is likely my response.
The "easy" way to write: You need a general sense of your plot, and things that must happen for the story to make sense, then just kind of fill it in as it goes...making sure it makes sense for the characters. Be an actor. Act out your characters' lives on paper.
What I mean by that is this: my most useful tool, other than my computer, was a notebook I custom-designed with a quote (from moi) that said "Writing is acting, but on paper." Why? I'm getting inside the emotions and thoughts of a number of characters. I'm letting myself feel how they might feel, think how they might think, and having them act accordingly. I'm not just writing what they do. I'm getting a sense of who they are, and showing that to others. It's like method acting, but invisible.
It can be exhausting, and sometimes emotionally painful, and great.
"Great," you may say. "But you didn't answer my question. How did I get from 'I don't know how to make this plot into a book' to 'wait why is this already 350 pages long'?" In other words: "How do I make it long enough?"
I did answer it. What you should be asking yourself is not "how can I turn this idea into a long text," but "how can I tell this story, fully?"
Again - the journey. The length of a story doesn't matter so much. Did you tell it? All of it? (Mine passed the 350-page mark, then higher and higher until I began to, uh, worry. But I wrote it until it was complete. Editing is for later. Don't mash your story into a set of length guidelines. Tell the story. Let the audience get to know the characters, through those characters' actions and reactions. Write what is necessary. If it's too long, trim it later. If it's too short - are you really telling the entirety of the story? What else needs to be in there? Not filler (although it has its uses). Have you told the whole story? If not, don't hold back.
A note on writing for an audience
People often say they're afraid to have others read their writing. In my case, it's not due to fears about the quality; I've worked professionally with an editor for long enough that feedback is generally more useful than scary.
What's frightening to me is the other part, the emotional part.
I've said before that writing is acting, but on paper. I really think it's true. You have to do the emotional work, and then convey that to an audience; it's very personal, both in how the character acts and in how you depict how they act (and why or why not). I'm not surprised that writing is used as a form of therapy.
Because of that, there's generally a lot of the author on the page. It's easy for me to write fluff, cute scenes, even technical detail. Action is more difficult, but still doable. It's hard, though, to write things that have strong emotion, or suppressed emotion, because that requires me to dig down and express myself in ways I might not feel comfortable doing, especially to a potentially huge audience. To have to examine why I feel discomfort. To have to confess to myself why I had a character act or feel or think a certain way. Writing is an act of bravery in that sense, beyond just showing off technical skill. Be proud of that bravery.
Final thoughts
Write. Every day. As much as you can. Just start writing. Even if it's terrible. (You can often salvage good material from terrible writing.) Just write. If you're tired, if you're not in the mood, DO IT.
Think about the journey, not just the signposts pointing toward the end.
Just write.
-
© 2020 S. Z. Attwell
For more information, see my website: szattwell.com
How I Wrote a Novel in Four Months, Part Three
Hello!
This is part three of my blog post on novel-writing. See parts one and two.
Writing tips are in bold.
This work is free, in an attempt to help aspiring writers, but please don't share it without linking to it here/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART THREE
And now, dispatches from the not-exactly-trenches:
I thought I had a handle on this writing thing. I was a professional writer, after all. I had experience. I was that kid with notebooks filled with plot ideas and character names and maps. I was prepared.
HAHA, no. I had no idea what I'd signed myself up for.
(This is not to scare you off. I hope to do this many more times. Just - watch your scone intake.)
What you need
Gather your supplies:
1. Have a good computer and good writing software (can't recommend anything, sorry!), or a notebook if you prefer hand-written.
2. In either case, have a notebook in which you can write things that must be accomplished, then check them off one at a time. (This was a huge help. I strongly recommend doing this. That way, you can make sure you haven't overlooked anything.)
3. Use slideshow software of your choice to keep various plot elements separate (writing software may have this built in)...or flashcards. For example, I had one slide for technology, one for each character, one to give a backstory to a certain organization within the City, etc. It was very helpful to quickly flip through everything, and to see each thing separately.
4. If you want/can, snacks and caffeine. I found that masala chai and chocolate was the best combination (other than food), for me at least.
Get in the mindset to write:
1. Set a routine if you can.
2. Prepare yourself to write every day. EVERY day. No excuses, unless you're ill or have something legitimately important going on in life.
Ready?
I'd always thought of writing as following a plot arc, with certain twists and such that have to happen for the story to work. And that's still the case. But my best writing happens when I set up a general plot - a conflict, some basic elements of the fictional world - and then let the characters interact with that fictional world. I know roughly where I want them to end up, and I have a sense of their motivations and agendas and what's going on that could derail those, so I can write in such a way that things should come together in the end. But getting there - that's what I care about. What happens in the characters' lives. I had to stop pushing the plot to get to that point and let the plot happen (this works for me whether it's a thriller or a slow meandering story). Let the characters act, in-character (very important)...because guess what comes from action? Consequences. And then more consequences. Soon enough, my plot started to snowball.
Putting together my plot was a challenge at first. For my novel, Aestus, Book 1: The City, I knew absolutely nothing about my characters' world, other than that it had to do with climate change, it was underground, it was far in the future, I had a specific geographic location in mind, and...that was about it. My initial idea was to see how an underground futuristic city would work in practice - a super interesting thought experiment - with a strong female character who wasn't clichéd, ideally (more on that later). So I sat down and thought about it. How would they get their water? How many people could a city like that theoretically support? How much energy would it use? Do your research. (I got very into this.)
That said, I tried not to let the planning stage (which is great fun for me) be visible in the text itself. I'm a big proponent of letting the "world" I'm building sort of just...be there in the background. It's annoying to me to have to read through pages of description. You can tell us that your society functions in x or y way. How do people living in it experience it?
I try specifically to show "the world" based on how it's relevant to the characters. For example, I could explain that the landscape looks like x or y, or I could say why it's relevant to this soldier:
(All of this information about Patrol, by the way, is a build-up to a main plot point. The build-up is very important. I wanted to give a human side of Patrol: why they're afraid, what their world is like, where they do battle, etc. I wanted an ordinary day in the life of Patrol that turns out not-so-ordinary.)
Planning
For those of you who are meticulous planners, I understand. I tried to plan. I really did. But the thing sort of mushroomed out of my control, and very quickly. It became more a game of "have I covered everything?" That checklist got very long. (Having multiple parties with conflicting and complicated agendas tends to do that. I liken it to being an orchestral composer - you have to keep all the parts going at the same time, and make sure everything lines up and fits together.)
The way I see it, characters fit the needs of the plot...and plots fit the needs of the characters. I've found that my stories start from the first of these principles and quickly morph into the second, sticking as usual to the general outlines of the plot just so that there's a cohesive narrative. But don't be afraid to do a 180 with a character, or to replace them altogether. Sometimes characters need to be revised; sometimes they just pop up.
For example: Gavin.
Gavin Tskoulis is one of the biggest (literally and figuratively) characters in Aestus. He's Jossey's bodyguard of sorts and oldest friend. He's one of the heads of Patrol, the powerful military that helps keep the City safe. He's indispensable to the plot.
And he came out of filler text.
I kid you not. I made him up to make one of the flashbacks longer to make the rest of a chapter longer, back when I was struggling with how to write/plot. In that flashback, I talked about Jossey's brother, and their childhood, and - I think because I needed more detail - his best friend Gavin.
One of my main characters - extremely important to the plot - just sort of...happened. From filler to indispensable character, all because I needed an excuse to extend part of the timeline. Literally.
Introducing Gavin to my carefully-constructed Plot-with-a-capital-P was like dropping a boulder into a large-ish puddle. It didn't create ripples. It created a huge displacement of water. One that I didn't know how to deal with. But he was there, and he was suddenly a Major Character, and I couldn't bear to delete him. In keeping him in, I instantly derailed a large chunk of my plot.
And it was an excellent decision, thank God. I'm so glad I kept him in there.
I should back up for a moment and explain that I was initially very insistent that There Would Be No Romance in this story. Why? I am sick and tired of epic stories with "strong female characters" in which the arc eventually leads to her wedding/romance/etc. as the - or a major - achievement toward which the story builds, as if that's the highest goal to which she can aspire as a heroine. I have no problem with her ending up with someone, but that should not usually be the focus of the story. Does she get the guy? Does she not? How about, whatever, great if she does, yay weddings, but that's not the point of the story? How else does she change over time? What does she need to accomplish or achieve? Who is she? So I purposely started out writing Jossey as tough but fair, as strong, as terrified of the dark, as extremely self-sufficient, etc. - in short, as a rounded character, regardless of the men in her life. In fact, I didn't really care much who was in her life when I started. There should be, I thought, one helpful young man who assists her on the bus when it breaks down, just because she couldn't do everything herself, but he was just filler. He was a way to get her to the main part of the plot where she starts to figure out the other dangers she's facing...by herself. She would prove herself, blah blah. She didn't need anyone. She was a survivor. She didn't show vulnerability.
And then I rethought a few things.
In particular, introducing Gavin was like taking a hammer to much of that. Not to the principles listed above, to which I think I've stuck pretty well, but to the way that she could be a strong female character with men in her life who cared and wanted to help. Along those lines, I did a complete overhaul of one of the earliest characters - the young man who helps her when the bus breaks down. He is no longer filler. Far from it.
There you have it. Two of my main characters literally started as filler.
I'm talking main characters. That's unheard of for me.
The point of this is, it's okay to rethink your characters. It's okay to experiment and rewrite large chunks of your plot. Sometimes it's necessary. Sometimes it makes it much better.
The ending
For about 90% of my book, perhaps longer, I had a very specific ending in mind. That ending did not happen as I pictured it. I am okay with that. It needed to be changed, so I changed it. Do what makes sense for the plot and the characters. If you really love a scene, see if it can be worked in. If not...don't be afraid to delete it.
Additional thoughts
1. When I plot, I write down what needs to happen, but when I actually write, I just sort of aim toward a general plot point and often abandon some of the detail if it's not critical. As they say in art lessons, sketch lightly, give the impression of the thing, not every single line.
2. Re: spoilers, I throw in little clues as I go, which is fun.
3. When I don't want something to sound contrived, but I have to write a transition, I try to throw a cute (but natural) scene in there if possible. Keep it moving without letting it become boring.
4. Pro tip: It helps to be less picky about the plot you've constructed and more picky about the characters, who often are not constrained by what you may think is the plot. Once they start "acting" contrary to what you've planned, that's usually a good thing - it generally means you've gotten a sense of their motivations and such, and relayed in-character actions accordingly.
EXCEPTION: PLOT TAR PITS, or WHAT HAVE I DONE.
"I think it's plausible enough"/"I can figure it out later?" are not solid foundations for a story (!). At least not when it's a core element of your story. Oops. I'm calling this a plot tar pit, rather than a plot hole, given the effort required to get out of these when they're truly sticky (such as relying on unfeasible technology for your science fiction novel, *cough*). Swimmers beware. (You can, however, often figure it out later. I do not recommend this method, especially as the issue occurred to me several hundred pages in.)
Similarly, do not - DO NOT - write an epic scene with multiple perspectives without working out the timelines first. Just...don't. Anything that requires planning...plan it. Do your readers a favor and make everything line up correctly.
One more note - regarding twists and such, and the reveal, here's a blog post I wrote to myself:
-
Click here for Part Four
© 2020 S. Z. Attwell
This is part three of my blog post on novel-writing. See parts one and two.
Writing tips are in bold.
This work is free, in an attempt to help aspiring writers, but please don't share it without linking to it here/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART THREE
And now, dispatches from the not-exactly-trenches:
I thought I had a handle on this writing thing. I was a professional writer, after all. I had experience. I was that kid with notebooks filled with plot ideas and character names and maps. I was prepared.
HAHA, no. I had no idea what I'd signed myself up for.
(This is not to scare you off. I hope to do this many more times. Just - watch your scone intake.)
What you need
Gather your supplies:
1. Have a good computer and good writing software (can't recommend anything, sorry!), or a notebook if you prefer hand-written.
2. In either case, have a notebook in which you can write things that must be accomplished, then check them off one at a time. (This was a huge help. I strongly recommend doing this. That way, you can make sure you haven't overlooked anything.)
3. Use slideshow software of your choice to keep various plot elements separate (writing software may have this built in)...or flashcards. For example, I had one slide for technology, one for each character, one to give a backstory to a certain organization within the City, etc. It was very helpful to quickly flip through everything, and to see each thing separately.
4. If you want/can, snacks and caffeine. I found that masala chai and chocolate was the best combination (other than food), for me at least.
Get in the mindset to write:
1. Set a routine if you can.
2. Prepare yourself to write every day. EVERY day. No excuses, unless you're ill or have something legitimately important going on in life.
Ready?
I'd always thought of writing as following a plot arc, with certain twists and such that have to happen for the story to work. And that's still the case. But my best writing happens when I set up a general plot - a conflict, some basic elements of the fictional world - and then let the characters interact with that fictional world. I know roughly where I want them to end up, and I have a sense of their motivations and agendas and what's going on that could derail those, so I can write in such a way that things should come together in the end. But getting there - that's what I care about. What happens in the characters' lives. I had to stop pushing the plot to get to that point and let the plot happen (this works for me whether it's a thriller or a slow meandering story). Let the characters act, in-character (very important)...because guess what comes from action? Consequences. And then more consequences. Soon enough, my plot started to snowball.
Putting together my plot was a challenge at first. For my novel, Aestus, Book 1: The City, I knew absolutely nothing about my characters' world, other than that it had to do with climate change, it was underground, it was far in the future, I had a specific geographic location in mind, and...that was about it. My initial idea was to see how an underground futuristic city would work in practice - a super interesting thought experiment - with a strong female character who wasn't clichéd, ideally (more on that later). So I sat down and thought about it. How would they get their water? How many people could a city like that theoretically support? How much energy would it use? Do your research. (I got very into this.)
That said, I tried not to let the planning stage (which is great fun for me) be visible in the text itself. I'm a big proponent of letting the "world" I'm building sort of just...be there in the background. It's annoying to me to have to read through pages of description. You can tell us that your society functions in x or y way. How do people living in it experience it?
I try specifically to show "the world" based on how it's relevant to the characters. For example, I could explain that the landscape looks like x or y, or I could say why it's relevant to this soldier:
"Below them, the valley spread out in a semi-circle, pocked with holes and rivulets where flash floods had apparently carved their way over the centuries. When it rained here, it poured, Wickford knew. Patrol lost a man or two every year to the deluges.
He glanced at the sky. It was clear.
Beyond the flat valley, the canyon entrances yawned, parallel gashes in the Earth. They wound their way toward the horizon.
The Onlar. That's where their caves began. The canyons were pitch-black.
Patrol would probably be at a huge disadvantage against creatures that could see in the dark."
- Aestus, Book 1: The City, Chapter 19
(All of this information about Patrol, by the way, is a build-up to a main plot point. The build-up is very important. I wanted to give a human side of Patrol: why they're afraid, what their world is like, where they do battle, etc. I wanted an ordinary day in the life of Patrol that turns out not-so-ordinary.)
Planning
For those of you who are meticulous planners, I understand. I tried to plan. I really did. But the thing sort of mushroomed out of my control, and very quickly. It became more a game of "have I covered everything?" That checklist got very long. (Having multiple parties with conflicting and complicated agendas tends to do that. I liken it to being an orchestral composer - you have to keep all the parts going at the same time, and make sure everything lines up and fits together.)
The way I see it, characters fit the needs of the plot...and plots fit the needs of the characters. I've found that my stories start from the first of these principles and quickly morph into the second, sticking as usual to the general outlines of the plot just so that there's a cohesive narrative. But don't be afraid to do a 180 with a character, or to replace them altogether. Sometimes characters need to be revised; sometimes they just pop up.
For example: Gavin.
Gavin Tskoulis is one of the biggest (literally and figuratively) characters in Aestus. He's Jossey's bodyguard of sorts and oldest friend. He's one of the heads of Patrol, the powerful military that helps keep the City safe. He's indispensable to the plot.
And he came out of filler text.
I kid you not. I made him up to make one of the flashbacks longer to make the rest of a chapter longer, back when I was struggling with how to write/plot. In that flashback, I talked about Jossey's brother, and their childhood, and - I think because I needed more detail - his best friend Gavin.
One of my main characters - extremely important to the plot - just sort of...happened. From filler to indispensable character, all because I needed an excuse to extend part of the timeline. Literally.
Introducing Gavin to my carefully-constructed Plot-with-a-capital-P was like dropping a boulder into a large-ish puddle. It didn't create ripples. It created a huge displacement of water. One that I didn't know how to deal with. But he was there, and he was suddenly a Major Character, and I couldn't bear to delete him. In keeping him in, I instantly derailed a large chunk of my plot.
And it was an excellent decision, thank God. I'm so glad I kept him in there.
I should back up for a moment and explain that I was initially very insistent that There Would Be No Romance in this story. Why? I am sick and tired of epic stories with "strong female characters" in which the arc eventually leads to her wedding/romance/etc. as the - or a major - achievement toward which the story builds, as if that's the highest goal to which she can aspire as a heroine. I have no problem with her ending up with someone, but that should not usually be the focus of the story. Does she get the guy? Does she not? How about, whatever, great if she does, yay weddings, but that's not the point of the story? How else does she change over time? What does she need to accomplish or achieve? Who is she? So I purposely started out writing Jossey as tough but fair, as strong, as terrified of the dark, as extremely self-sufficient, etc. - in short, as a rounded character, regardless of the men in her life. In fact, I didn't really care much who was in her life when I started. There should be, I thought, one helpful young man who assists her on the bus when it breaks down, just because she couldn't do everything herself, but he was just filler. He was a way to get her to the main part of the plot where she starts to figure out the other dangers she's facing...by herself. She would prove herself, blah blah. She didn't need anyone. She was a survivor. She didn't show vulnerability.
And then I rethought a few things.
In particular, introducing Gavin was like taking a hammer to much of that. Not to the principles listed above, to which I think I've stuck pretty well, but to the way that she could be a strong female character with men in her life who cared and wanted to help. Along those lines, I did a complete overhaul of one of the earliest characters - the young man who helps her when the bus breaks down. He is no longer filler. Far from it.
There you have it. Two of my main characters literally started as filler.
I'm talking main characters. That's unheard of for me.
The point of this is, it's okay to rethink your characters. It's okay to experiment and rewrite large chunks of your plot. Sometimes it's necessary. Sometimes it makes it much better.
The ending
For about 90% of my book, perhaps longer, I had a very specific ending in mind. That ending did not happen as I pictured it. I am okay with that. It needed to be changed, so I changed it. Do what makes sense for the plot and the characters. If you really love a scene, see if it can be worked in. If not...don't be afraid to delete it.
Additional thoughts
1. When I plot, I write down what needs to happen, but when I actually write, I just sort of aim toward a general plot point and often abandon some of the detail if it's not critical. As they say in art lessons, sketch lightly, give the impression of the thing, not every single line.
2. Re: spoilers, I throw in little clues as I go, which is fun.
3. When I don't want something to sound contrived, but I have to write a transition, I try to throw a cute (but natural) scene in there if possible. Keep it moving without letting it become boring.
4. Pro tip: It helps to be less picky about the plot you've constructed and more picky about the characters, who often are not constrained by what you may think is the plot. Once they start "acting" contrary to what you've planned, that's usually a good thing - it generally means you've gotten a sense of their motivations and such, and relayed in-character actions accordingly.
EXCEPTION: PLOT TAR PITS, or WHAT HAVE I DONE.
"I think it's plausible enough"/"I can figure it out later?" are not solid foundations for a story (!). At least not when it's a core element of your story. Oops. I'm calling this a plot tar pit, rather than a plot hole, given the effort required to get out of these when they're truly sticky (such as relying on unfeasible technology for your science fiction novel, *cough*). Swimmers beware. (You can, however, often figure it out later. I do not recommend this method, especially as the issue occurred to me several hundred pages in.)
Similarly, do not - DO NOT - write an epic scene with multiple perspectives without working out the timelines first. Just...don't. Anything that requires planning...plan it. Do your readers a favor and make everything line up correctly.
One more note - regarding twists and such, and the reveal, here's a blog post I wrote to myself:
"When do you reveal something about a character? Theoretically, you'd build up to it as planned – holding it back until *just* the right moment.
But sometimes you want them to just show [SPOILER] to the world in a beautifully crafted moment...that would probably totally wreck the suspense and the overall plot arc. But would be so satisfying.
So so satisfying.
Sigh.
#selfcontrol"
-
Click here for Part Four
© 2020 S. Z. Attwell
How I Wrote a Novel in Four Months, Part Two
Hello!
This is part two of my blog post on novel-writing. See part one here.
Writing tips are in bold.
This work is free, in an attempt to help aspiring writers, but please don't share it without linking to it here/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART TWO
My biggest problem with writing was always "how to turn a plot idea into an actual full-length story." In academia, this isn't a problem. I write an outline and fill it out with content (from myself, from various sources, etc.). I just need the outline and I can proceed.
Fiction seemed like it might work that way too. I tried filling in the bullet-points of my painstakingly-written plot. I sat down and dutifully wrote every day.
And yet none of it worked...until I stopped worrying so much about the plot and started thinking of the story as a journey.
Plots are composed of milestones that must be met, and they must build momentum toward the ending. BUT...the point of the story is the story, not just having your characters make it from Point A to Point B. This may seem obvious, and on the surface it is, but it was a huge shift in how I thought about writing.
What made the difference was realizing I was pushing the plot forward to get to the end. But unless you're a truly exceptional thriller writer, that type of goal-driven writing often feels empty to me in the end. "Great, the characters accomplished something big. Who are they again?" Do we care about them? Would we want to read about something unrelated in their lives? Or would we put down the book and think "well, that was exciting, but meh"? Think of the last several novels you've read. Can you remember the characters' names? Why or why not?
Some novels you don't want to end.
Read that again.
Some novels you don't want to end.
I think there's a lot to learn from that. It's not just about the plot. I realized this when I got very into an online show that was about 150 episodes longer than I'd expected (no exaggeration). I just kept watching because it was so epic, and because I cared so much about the characters, including the villains. I could happily watch those characters for years. I would be okay with the show continuing throughout their lives, and on to the next generation.
On the other hand, I read a book recently - a bestseller! - and was hooked for several hundred pages by the staggering beauty of the writing style itself. The imagery was, for the most part, gorgeous. I aspire to write that beautifully. But I got to the end and...it fell flat. One of the characters I cared about died suddenly, no real closure of any kind. He just...died. I'd spent hundreds of pages getting to know him, and caring about him, and he was suddenly killed in an accident, I think, I can't remember exactly...and the author moved on.
That was it. Just another casualty of war. (I've only seen this technique used effectively once, and it was not in that novel.) As for the rest of the novel, it ended similarly. The richness of the detail, the very human emotion - it sort of faded and was wrapped up, and I didn't care if it continued. I ended up giving the book away, I think. And I rarely get rid of books, but I had no desire to return to it.
You should want a novel to keep going, at least in my opinion. Yes, you should build toward a peak and then wrap up the plot, but fiction books in my opinion are only half the actual plot, and half the fictional world and its characters.
That right there is the goal. Not only to tell an epic story, or a sweet story, or similar, but to make people feel like they're in their own little bubble for a while. To let them journey with the characters.
And to do that, I think you really need to focus as much on the journey - on the characters you're writing about - as on the things they go through, the milestones they must pass to get to the end of the novel.
(Also, as a reader, why would I spend hours and hours to get to the destination unless I am enjoying the journey?)
So slow down. Enjoy the little fictional world you're putting together. Enjoy the characters.
-
Click here for Part Three
© 2020 S.Z. Attwell
This is part two of my blog post on novel-writing. See part one here.
Writing tips are in bold.
This work is free, in an attempt to help aspiring writers, but please don't share it without linking to it here/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART TWO
My biggest problem with writing was always "how to turn a plot idea into an actual full-length story." In academia, this isn't a problem. I write an outline and fill it out with content (from myself, from various sources, etc.). I just need the outline and I can proceed.
Fiction seemed like it might work that way too. I tried filling in the bullet-points of my painstakingly-written plot. I sat down and dutifully wrote every day.
And yet none of it worked...until I stopped worrying so much about the plot and started thinking of the story as a journey.
Plots are composed of milestones that must be met, and they must build momentum toward the ending. BUT...the point of the story is the story, not just having your characters make it from Point A to Point B. This may seem obvious, and on the surface it is, but it was a huge shift in how I thought about writing.
What made the difference was realizing I was pushing the plot forward to get to the end. But unless you're a truly exceptional thriller writer, that type of goal-driven writing often feels empty to me in the end. "Great, the characters accomplished something big. Who are they again?" Do we care about them? Would we want to read about something unrelated in their lives? Or would we put down the book and think "well, that was exciting, but meh"? Think of the last several novels you've read. Can you remember the characters' names? Why or why not?
Some novels you don't want to end.
Read that again.
Some novels you don't want to end.
I think there's a lot to learn from that. It's not just about the plot. I realized this when I got very into an online show that was about 150 episodes longer than I'd expected (no exaggeration). I just kept watching because it was so epic, and because I cared so much about the characters, including the villains. I could happily watch those characters for years. I would be okay with the show continuing throughout their lives, and on to the next generation.
On the other hand, I read a book recently - a bestseller! - and was hooked for several hundred pages by the staggering beauty of the writing style itself. The imagery was, for the most part, gorgeous. I aspire to write that beautifully. But I got to the end and...it fell flat. One of the characters I cared about died suddenly, no real closure of any kind. He just...died. I'd spent hundreds of pages getting to know him, and caring about him, and he was suddenly killed in an accident, I think, I can't remember exactly...and the author moved on.
That was it. Just another casualty of war. (I've only seen this technique used effectively once, and it was not in that novel.) As for the rest of the novel, it ended similarly. The richness of the detail, the very human emotion - it sort of faded and was wrapped up, and I didn't care if it continued. I ended up giving the book away, I think. And I rarely get rid of books, but I had no desire to return to it.
You should want a novel to keep going, at least in my opinion. Yes, you should build toward a peak and then wrap up the plot, but fiction books in my opinion are only half the actual plot, and half the fictional world and its characters.
That right there is the goal. Not only to tell an epic story, or a sweet story, or similar, but to make people feel like they're in their own little bubble for a while. To let them journey with the characters.
And to do that, I think you really need to focus as much on the journey - on the characters you're writing about - as on the things they go through, the milestones they must pass to get to the end of the novel.
(Also, as a reader, why would I spend hours and hours to get to the destination unless I am enjoying the journey?)
So slow down. Enjoy the little fictional world you're putting together. Enjoy the characters.
-
Click here for Part Three
© 2020 S.Z. Attwell
How I Wrote a Novel in Four Months
Hello!
My name is Sabrina, and until last year I had no idea how to go from story idea to actual novel. As of now, I've written TWO novels, the first of which can be found here. It's a sci-fi epic, a dystopian look at the world centuries into severe climate change. I wrote it, and its sequel, in four months.
The series started out as a six-chapter attempt at...something...and stayed that way until my friend essentially demanded that I post more than one chapter a month. Now it's two volumes, each around 600-700 pages, and I still find things to write about in the characters' fictional lives, to the glee of some of my advance readers. (One half-complained that I hadn't worked the additional material into the plot. I responded that the book was already 700ish pages!)
I can now, thank God, consider myself a published author. Below, I present my thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and how writing a novel changed my perspective on writing in general. (I've been a professional science writer for several years.) Given the length of this guide, I've divided it up into chapters, to be posted ASAP.
I've included both some of my reflections on the process and writer tips, which I've put in bold.
Someone suggested I made this information into a book and sell it, but I'd like to keep it free to help aspiring writers. That said, it is copyrighted - please don't share without linking back to this/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART ONE
For our first stop, behold the Swamp. This is where half-thought-out ideas have floated for months, sometimes years, on end, perhaps being brought up on the author's (my) screen at some point, only to be abandoned to the murk yet again.
I did not actually call this part of the writing process the Swamp. I called it I Have A Job, which was definitely an excuse for I Don't Know How To Make These Ideas Into Novels (since I wrote an entire master's thesis while also Having a Job).
It is, however, possible to exit the swamp, to charge forth upon the shining plains...
Just kidding, a little. Novel-writing is not quite that dramatic, at least for me. It mostly involved staring at my screen and thinking through plot issues/writing a series of events in a notebook while drinking caffeine and searching online for a fair amount of questionable things. But it doesn't have to be a chore. Writing can be hard. But it can also be amazing.
And there is a method to it.
-
It was a dark and stormy...well, literally, it was dark(ish) and stormy outside when the idea for my novel Aestus came into my head.
I was standing in a bus station, having just escaped an incoming thunderstorm, and was glaring down the bus tunnel, wondering why certain buses were taking so long to get there. It was...unpleasant weather, burning hot, the storm close to breaking, so loud you could hear the thunder despite being underground, and you could almost see the humidity in the air. I stood there and waited, hearing nothing but the WWWAAAAAGHHH of fans roaring in the background and resenting certain aspects of public transportation (and extreme heat, and humidity, not in that order).
As I stood there, miserable, it occurred to me that this could (God forbid) be our future: waiting for a bus to come to take us, not out into the blazing-hot muggy world, but down. Down into an underground city where some of us could ride out the worst of climate change. What if, I thought, that was what I was waiting for right now? A bus to take me down into the Earth, into the blackness, where at least it might be cool?
What would that look like? How far down would it be? How scary would such a ride be? What if that bus broke down halfway there? In the dark? With not enough water and no light?
What if there was another reason that they needed a bus to protect them?
Creatures that could see them in the dark?
With claws? (I have an active imagination.)
That experience in the bus station became the following opening chapter from Aestus:
I loved the idea. I wrote up a few chapters and put them on a blog. I asked for feedback, and I tried to construct a plot that I could carry over the course of 200 pages or so, but I had no idea how to expand it, how to turn five pages of plot or so into 200+ pages of text. So I let it sit for months and months in the Swamp. My little story floated, near-abandoned, in the murky waters for quite a while, until (as mentioned) my friend basically complained to me that he wanted to read my writing but got an update of a chapter a month. (Writing tip: having an audience can be very motivating.)
I tried to get it restarted. I had tried to map out the plot previously, and I had a decent structure going, but I was missing something. I wasn't sure what. I couldn't get the little seed of a plot to bloom into anything.
Then I figured it out.
-
Click here for Part Two
© 2020 S. Z. Attwell
My name is Sabrina, and until last year I had no idea how to go from story idea to actual novel. As of now, I've written TWO novels, the first of which can be found here. It's a sci-fi epic, a dystopian look at the world centuries into severe climate change. I wrote it, and its sequel, in four months.
The series started out as a six-chapter attempt at...something...and stayed that way until my friend essentially demanded that I post more than one chapter a month. Now it's two volumes, each around 600-700 pages, and I still find things to write about in the characters' fictional lives, to the glee of some of my advance readers. (One half-complained that I hadn't worked the additional material into the plot. I responded that the book was already 700ish pages!)
I can now, thank God, consider myself a published author. Below, I present my thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and how writing a novel changed my perspective on writing in general. (I've been a professional science writer for several years.) Given the length of this guide, I've divided it up into chapters, to be posted ASAP.
I've included both some of my reflections on the process and writer tips, which I've put in bold.
Someone suggested I made this information into a book and sell it, but I'd like to keep it free to help aspiring writers. That said, it is copyrighted - please don't share without linking back to this/proper attribution!
-------------------------------------------
PART ONE
For our first stop, behold the Swamp. This is where half-thought-out ideas have floated for months, sometimes years, on end, perhaps being brought up on the author's (my) screen at some point, only to be abandoned to the murk yet again.
I did not actually call this part of the writing process the Swamp. I called it I Have A Job, which was definitely an excuse for I Don't Know How To Make These Ideas Into Novels (since I wrote an entire master's thesis while also Having a Job).
It is, however, possible to exit the swamp, to charge forth upon the shining plains...
Just kidding, a little. Novel-writing is not quite that dramatic, at least for me. It mostly involved staring at my screen and thinking through plot issues/writing a series of events in a notebook while drinking caffeine and searching online for a fair amount of questionable things. But it doesn't have to be a chore. Writing can be hard. But it can also be amazing.
And there is a method to it.
-
It was a dark and stormy...well, literally, it was dark(ish) and stormy outside when the idea for my novel Aestus came into my head.
I was standing in a bus station, having just escaped an incoming thunderstorm, and was glaring down the bus tunnel, wondering why certain buses were taking so long to get there. It was...unpleasant weather, burning hot, the storm close to breaking, so loud you could hear the thunder despite being underground, and you could almost see the humidity in the air. I stood there and waited, hearing nothing but the WWWAAAAAGHHH of fans roaring in the background and resenting certain aspects of public transportation (and extreme heat, and humidity, not in that order).
As I stood there, miserable, it occurred to me that this could (God forbid) be our future: waiting for a bus to come to take us, not out into the blazing-hot muggy world, but down. Down into an underground city where some of us could ride out the worst of climate change. What if, I thought, that was what I was waiting for right now? A bus to take me down into the Earth, into the blackness, where at least it might be cool?
What would that look like? How far down would it be? How scary would such a ride be? What if that bus broke down halfway there? In the dark? With not enough water and no light?
What if there was another reason that they needed a bus to protect them?
Creatures that could see them in the dark?
With claws? (I have an active imagination.)
That experience in the bus station became the following opening chapter from Aestus:
"The tunnels were burning.
Jossey stood watching the condensation running down the rough-hewn walls in the flickering light, waiting for the shuttle to come and take her deeper underground, to the safe zone. The fans were on down far below, a constant blasting in the background, but the air was barely moving. She fumbled in her bag for the tin of water, reassuring herself for the fifth time that it was there. Sweat poured from her, and from the other workers staring dead-eyed at the floor or wall, waiting for the evening transport to arrive.
It wasn't like the shuttle to be this late. Storms were already rocking the atmosphere above them, and the thunder could be heard, dully, above the fans deep in the tunnels. She hoped she had enough water to last if the transport was delayed again.
Jossey checked the red safety gauge on her wrist. 110 degrees, and that was cooler than it had been earlier in the day, before the storms. She wiped at her forehead, tried to make herself more comfortable without actually opening the tin; water had to be strictly rationed."
- Aestus, Book 1, The City: Chapter 2
I loved the idea. I wrote up a few chapters and put them on a blog. I asked for feedback, and I tried to construct a plot that I could carry over the course of 200 pages or so, but I had no idea how to expand it, how to turn five pages of plot or so into 200+ pages of text. So I let it sit for months and months in the Swamp. My little story floated, near-abandoned, in the murky waters for quite a while, until (as mentioned) my friend basically complained to me that he wanted to read my writing but got an update of a chapter a month. (Writing tip: having an audience can be very motivating.)
I tried to get it restarted. I had tried to map out the plot previously, and I had a decent structure going, but I was missing something. I wasn't sure what. I couldn't get the little seed of a plot to bloom into anything.
Then I figured it out.
-
Click here for Part Two
© 2020 S. Z. Attwell
