Brian Yansky's Blog, page 23
September 23, 2011
mad scientist-character
Mad Scientist 18
I need him to be more. I need to go deeper into the character. He doesn't fit in his world. He wants to know why. That's the key. He thinks he wants to fit in but that's not what he wants. He wants to know why he doesn't. ( I do constantly, in revision, try to sort out this what he "wants" question and find it has many layers and this helps me give him layers). This means he needs to feel something isn't right. He thinks it's in him that it's not right. So this needs to be more present in the novel right from the very start.
This kind of mulling over the character goes on all the time at this stage in a draft. It causes many close calls when you're driving and your loved ones often find themselves talking to themselves while you are sitting next to them. HEY, they'll say, WERE YOU LISTENING TO ME? You weren't. OF COURSE, you say. But if you've been writing a while they've seen this look before and they know.
Mad Scientist 19
I'm at the end of this draft that is draft 2 and draft 3 in some parts of it. I've done a lot in this draft and that's the best way to think of it. I know there's a lot more to do but I've done a lot.
Do I go back and start over or do I let it sit a while. At this point I might do either. It doesn't feel done enough to go for the "take a break," get DISTANCE draft. No, it doesn't seem quite right enough for that so I think I'll rework certain parts. I guess I'm uncertain what to do. I know the end needs work so I might focus on that. I'll see where that leads me. Writing is full of choices. In revision I'm making those decisions in a less intuitive way than in the first discover draft and the second first draft.
I need him to be more. I need to go deeper into the character. He doesn't fit in his world. He wants to know why. That's the key. He thinks he wants to fit in but that's not what he wants. He wants to know why he doesn't. ( I do constantly, in revision, try to sort out this what he "wants" question and find it has many layers and this helps me give him layers). This means he needs to feel something isn't right. He thinks it's in him that it's not right. So this needs to be more present in the novel right from the very start.
This kind of mulling over the character goes on all the time at this stage in a draft. It causes many close calls when you're driving and your loved ones often find themselves talking to themselves while you are sitting next to them. HEY, they'll say, WERE YOU LISTENING TO ME? You weren't. OF COURSE, you say. But if you've been writing a while they've seen this look before and they know.
Mad Scientist 19
I'm at the end of this draft that is draft 2 and draft 3 in some parts of it. I've done a lot in this draft and that's the best way to think of it. I know there's a lot more to do but I've done a lot.
Do I go back and start over or do I let it sit a while. At this point I might do either. It doesn't feel done enough to go for the "take a break," get DISTANCE draft. No, it doesn't seem quite right enough for that so I think I'll rework certain parts. I guess I'm uncertain what to do. I know the end needs work so I might focus on that. I'll see where that leads me. Writing is full of choices. In revision I'm making those decisions in a less intuitive way than in the first discover draft and the second first draft.
September 16, 2011
Keep Trying
Here's a little Ray Bradbury. All a writer can do is keep trying. You try to find ways to get better when you aren't writing and when you are. Ray Bradbury talks here about his early struggles and the turning point in his writing when he wrote a story that mattered, that he felt was beautiful. It came out of an experience he had as a child. It was a terrible and haunting experience. He was a little boy playing on a beach at a lake. A girl was playing there, too. Then she went into the lake and she didn't come out. That's what he said. It's such a haunting line. The death of the little girl is one of those memories he carries and it is the one that inspires this first story that he calls beautiful. Her going into the lake and not coming out becomes a metaphor for death in the story. Stories come from everywhere. But I think a lot of our best writing begins in memories that won't go away.
September 9, 2011
Persuading The Character to Arc
Mad Scientist 16
Connections are important whenever you're working on a manuscript. As I'm going through The Mad Scientist what I'm realizing is the connections I make seem to be different than the ones I made in the first draft.
It's coming together more now. Like I just realized a message my main character got earlier in the novel wasn't right. It needed to be more specific because it didn't really add anything to the later action.
So I went back and changed it and that changed the later section. It made it more real. These connections are so important. Everything has to come out of everything else in an organic way. Everything has to fit together, add to narrative and character.
Mad Scientist 17
I think I'm writing something into my character that is unearned. Not to say I'm stealing, you understand. No theft involved. Just that he hasn't earned the thing I'm saying he has.
We talk about character arc. Well, I don't, but I've had editors who have—as in, "Brian, this character doesn't have enough arc." BUT the character can't just arc because I want him to. I think it's right that he should change in the way I have him change in the manuscript, but now what I have to do is go back and, beginning at the beginning, change him so that later changes seem true to his character.
Writing is rewriting and rewriting and rewriting—at least for me. I need all the chances I can get.
Connections are important whenever you're working on a manuscript. As I'm going through The Mad Scientist what I'm realizing is the connections I make seem to be different than the ones I made in the first draft.
It's coming together more now. Like I just realized a message my main character got earlier in the novel wasn't right. It needed to be more specific because it didn't really add anything to the later action.
So I went back and changed it and that changed the later section. It made it more real. These connections are so important. Everything has to come out of everything else in an organic way. Everything has to fit together, add to narrative and character.
Mad Scientist 17
I think I'm writing something into my character that is unearned. Not to say I'm stealing, you understand. No theft involved. Just that he hasn't earned the thing I'm saying he has.
We talk about character arc. Well, I don't, but I've had editors who have—as in, "Brian, this character doesn't have enough arc." BUT the character can't just arc because I want him to. I think it's right that he should change in the way I have him change in the manuscript, but now what I have to do is go back and, beginning at the beginning, change him so that later changes seem true to his character.
Writing is rewriting and rewriting and rewriting—at least for me. I need all the chances I can get.
September 2, 2011
To Outline or Not to Outline?
A break in my diary concerning the way I'm writing A Mad Scientist's Son to ask:
To Outline or Not to Outline?
Whether it is nobler in the mind's eyes to scratch out an outline of short or long length or suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without even a written hint of how you'll transcribe them onto the page before you begin? Yep, that's the question.
It seems to me that if you do not outline at all, if you're one who stumbles along through a first draft, then that's all there is to say about that. Just do it. Most writers are like this. I am like this about my first draft which is really just a discovery draft. I've been thinking about the story for some time but I haven't written anything down. I just start writing. However, there many places in the manuscript when I just write a few lines for a scene and write something like MORE LATER. This is sort of the Swiss-cheese method. There will be big gaps or holes in this draft. So it will be on the short side, but (VERY IMPORTANT) it will go from beginning to end. I know my end by the end. Next draft I write toward that end.
So in a sense my discovery draft sort of works like an outline except it's not. Some writers do outline. Some outline a lot and some a little before they begin. I once interviewed Sherman Alexie and he said he always knew the last line of his novel before he started and wrote toward that. Check out how much John Irving outlines here—amazing to me:.
As with all elements of process, you have to do what works for you.
August 25, 2011
More Mad Scientist's Son
Mad Scientist 14
Doing this blog is making me aware of how much I'm changing in this version of Mad Scientist (version number 3 if you count the discovery draft). It's not down to just language yet by any means. My changes that attempt to clarify theme earlier in the manuscript are making me think I need to cut characters and completely redo the next few chapters. It feels like I went off the path here. By theme here I'm talking about what is lurking beneath the surface story—what ideas and issues are being worked out in this story.
Mad Scientist 15
I realized some things about the main characters that I didn't understand earlier. I just kept working on adding to manuscript and finally it seemed clear.
Why oh why couldn't I see this before? I don't want to seem ungrateful to the writer Gods. After all, it was a glorious morning, seeing the way to go. I praise them effusively. But this process is so damn messy.
You know what I'm grateful for though is the ability of self-delusion. It is so helpful that I'm able to think I'm writing better than I am at each stage of the writing. Okay, I know there are problems, but I still manage to find pleasure in a good sentence, an insight into character, etc…
So today I see the motivation of an important secondary character which will effect Frank, too, and more especially another important secondary character, and it's so much better than last draft, so much more believable within the context of the draft.
But here's another thought, back to the last paragraph. Maybe it doesn't matter when I come to my insights in writing as long as I come to them. And that ability to be happy within the context of a draft, that self-delusion, is a kind of gift.
Doing this blog is making me aware of how much I'm changing in this version of Mad Scientist (version number 3 if you count the discovery draft). It's not down to just language yet by any means. My changes that attempt to clarify theme earlier in the manuscript are making me think I need to cut characters and completely redo the next few chapters. It feels like I went off the path here. By theme here I'm talking about what is lurking beneath the surface story—what ideas and issues are being worked out in this story.
Mad Scientist 15
I realized some things about the main characters that I didn't understand earlier. I just kept working on adding to manuscript and finally it seemed clear.
Why oh why couldn't I see this before? I don't want to seem ungrateful to the writer Gods. After all, it was a glorious morning, seeing the way to go. I praise them effusively. But this process is so damn messy.
You know what I'm grateful for though is the ability of self-delusion. It is so helpful that I'm able to think I'm writing better than I am at each stage of the writing. Okay, I know there are problems, but I still manage to find pleasure in a good sentence, an insight into character, etc…
So today I see the motivation of an important secondary character which will effect Frank, too, and more especially another important secondary character, and it's so much better than last draft, so much more believable within the context of the draft.
But here's another thought, back to the last paragraph. Maybe it doesn't matter when I come to my insights in writing as long as I come to them. And that ability to be happy within the context of a draft, that self-delusion, is a kind of gift.
August 18, 2011
mad scientist 13
Mad Sceintist 13
What I'm struggling with today is something that I thought yesterday and that I've been mulling over since. Mulling is the writer way. Mull while you eat your Frosted Flakes (an admission that I eat kid's cereal for breakfast), take your shower, walk your dog, exercise or avoid exercise, and so on. Mull, mull, mull. Most writers are mullers.
But back to the point. My main character changes but I don't really have my secondary character changing. She is supporting my main character but that's not good enough.
This is definitely analysis here but I am in revision stage so I need to stand back in places.
1. I need to look for places to make my main character's CHANGING more dramatic.
2. I need to look at secondary characters and make them change more.
There are two concerns here. One is with narrative structure, that arc of character that people are always going on about and how it influences the arc of the story. The other is about characters, the heart of fiction. Really. If people don't care about your characters, then, in the words of movie Mafiosos, "Forget about it."
That was why, earlier, it worried me so much when I felt my characters didn't have heart, another way of saying they didn't feel flesh and blood yet.
So for the sake of story and character I need to clarify the changes that they go through in this story. I figured out one change that wasn't there before yesterday and today I'm going to go back through the first hundred pages I've revised and see if I can make that change work.
Also, if it does then it needs to be "in" the manuscript from the beginning. Any change made on p. 80 needs to connect to p.1.
August 11, 2011
more mad scientist
Still working on my mad science novel. I've been writing some blog entries as a kind of diary of the work and to show how I worked through problems in a specific novel I was writing. The blog entries are a little behind real time now. It's a strange, strange novel, so I do worry that I'm writing one that won't find a publisher. You never know, especially if you take chances in your work, if it will find a home. Even if it does work (and you're not certain of that either until you finish and sometimes not even then), your publisher--even if you've published a few books--might say no for a number of reasons. Still, you have to write what you have to write and the real enjoyment and pleasure in writing comes from that. But I can say that my agent has read a version of the novel and loved it. That's encouraging. Still more work to do, but I feel good that she didn't just say, "Now what is this again? Tell me again what you've written?" More later...back to the journal.....
***
I have to keep working on the language because one of the things I discover in revision is that I put a filter between the story and the reader too often. Yes, you have to summarize sometimes but when you're trying to involve the reader in a scene the filter not only distances the reader it makes me unable to see the deeper aspects of some interaction. I have to make the connections to deepen the writing.
***
Specificity of language helps me find my way and I keep working on that. You can write your way into deepening a character sometimes.
***
This is my third rewrite of the whole manuscript though some places have been rewritten more than that. Thinking about character today. Fiction is ultimately about getting readers to feel and experience what your characters experience so they care about them. Ideas behind all that are interesting if they're interesting ideas, but they aren't the reason the reader will read and care about your story/novel.
Okay, so one thing I'm doing today to try to deepen the characters is strengthening the relationship between the father and son. And what I just did was have a flashback and not long after that a flash-forward.
Flashback helped. It helped me see more of dad and son and I have to keep working that. I need to feel more what's at stake between them.
Flash-forward is me trying to say indirectly what the consequences of what's happening in a scene might be. This has to come out of character though. It can't be thought up. It has to flow organically from the scene. What it adds, besides character development, is a hint at the possible future of the story.
August 5, 2011
bang your head against the wall school of writing
I interrupt my regularly scheduled MAD SCIENTIST posts for an important message. As I was banging my head against the wall this morning trying to create a coherent sentence, I suddenly realized that this was my method of writing. I am of the bang-your-head-against- the-wall school of writing. True, it does lead to a slightly misshapen head and if you get carried away there is the danger of concussion, but it's my school just the same, my alma mater. Go bang-your-head-against- the- wall writers.
If you write and write and write WITH a constant eye toward what you're doing wrong and right in each piece you work on while, when perplexed, banging your head against the wall for guidance, you will eventually find your way. I am a believer.
Or so I think today.
If you write and write and write WITH a constant eye toward what you're doing wrong and right in each piece you work on while, when perplexed, banging your head against the wall for guidance, you will eventually find your way. I am a believer.
Or so I think today.
August 3, 2011
Mad Scientist's Son #8.9
MAD SCIENTIST 8
Okay, reading through the beginning of The Mad Scientist's Son and I think that the emphasis in wrong. I do think about structure more than I used to in revision because I know it's a weakness of mine. There's a lengthy flashback near the beginning and I'm going to have to cut. It takes the reader away from the main current of the story too soon. So not only is it a distraction but it may actually take the reader in the wrong direction. You don't want to take the reader in the wrong direction.
This relationship begins with unrequited love. Frank keeps saying, "My friend, not my girlfriend" because he has to keep reminding himself. I need to connect this to his NEED TO FIT IN—which is important to where he starts this novel.
MAD SCIENTIST 9
So one thing I see is Frank's POV is a little distant. I didn't see that before. Why can't I just see these things in draft 1? I don't know but I can't. And I'm not alone. Stephen King in his book on writing talks about how he finds big glaring train wreck problems in his manuscripts in revision. It's part of the process, I guess. And it sucks because you think once you finish a few novels you could avoid the glaring train wrecks but, like life, afraid not.
Maybe sometimes. Maybe.
But now, with Frank, focusing on POV and getting closer and making him see out of his POV instead of forcing an external POV , the language is changing and I'm writing myself closer to his character.
OLD VERSION: It was then that a hologram carrier pigeon fluttered above us and landed on my shoulder. Old bird eyes stared into mine in that flat, declarative way of, well, old birds. The technology for holograms was so good now that it was easy to forget the bird wasn't real.
NEW VERSION: The fluttering above me made me look up and there was a hologram carrier pigeon asking permission to land. I gave it and it landed on my shoulder, claws pinching my skin. Old bird eyes stared into mine in that flat, declarative way of, well, old birds. He seemed real and even intelligent, as if he had something to say. I mean more than a message.
This was a wrong thought. If I spoke it to others, they would frown.
There's something about seeing from the inside out, working from that place inside and coming out instead of trying to force the description in-- that adds more to a scene and also helps making connections inside a character. The things I start seeing because of a closer relationship to my character allow me to deepen that character.
I've just got to keep on. Of course they'll be tightening at the sentence and word level but this gives me a way into my character and story.
Or so I think today.
Okay, reading through the beginning of The Mad Scientist's Son and I think that the emphasis in wrong. I do think about structure more than I used to in revision because I know it's a weakness of mine. There's a lengthy flashback near the beginning and I'm going to have to cut. It takes the reader away from the main current of the story too soon. So not only is it a distraction but it may actually take the reader in the wrong direction. You don't want to take the reader in the wrong direction.
This relationship begins with unrequited love. Frank keeps saying, "My friend, not my girlfriend" because he has to keep reminding himself. I need to connect this to his NEED TO FIT IN—which is important to where he starts this novel.
MAD SCIENTIST 9
So one thing I see is Frank's POV is a little distant. I didn't see that before. Why can't I just see these things in draft 1? I don't know but I can't. And I'm not alone. Stephen King in his book on writing talks about how he finds big glaring train wreck problems in his manuscripts in revision. It's part of the process, I guess. And it sucks because you think once you finish a few novels you could avoid the glaring train wrecks but, like life, afraid not.
Maybe sometimes. Maybe.
But now, with Frank, focusing on POV and getting closer and making him see out of his POV instead of forcing an external POV , the language is changing and I'm writing myself closer to his character.
OLD VERSION: It was then that a hologram carrier pigeon fluttered above us and landed on my shoulder. Old bird eyes stared into mine in that flat, declarative way of, well, old birds. The technology for holograms was so good now that it was easy to forget the bird wasn't real.
NEW VERSION: The fluttering above me made me look up and there was a hologram carrier pigeon asking permission to land. I gave it and it landed on my shoulder, claws pinching my skin. Old bird eyes stared into mine in that flat, declarative way of, well, old birds. He seemed real and even intelligent, as if he had something to say. I mean more than a message.
This was a wrong thought. If I spoke it to others, they would frown.
There's something about seeing from the inside out, working from that place inside and coming out instead of trying to force the description in-- that adds more to a scene and also helps making connections inside a character. The things I start seeing because of a closer relationship to my character allow me to deepen that character.
I've just got to keep on. Of course they'll be tightening at the sentence and word level but this gives me a way into my character and story.
Or so I think today.
July 27, 2011
Mad Scientist's Son #7
I'm still playing around with the heart metaphor. Heart can be used in another way, as in center. And maybe that's part of my struggle right now as I end this second draft of the novel and go to the third.
I imagine different hearts of the novel, different centers, and I try to organically get to one, but I don't think I have yet. I mean I have several ideas about what might be at the heart of this novel, but they're not entirely clear to me.
This could be a novel about someone who doesn't fit into his world and is trying to fit in-- but it isn't that novel now. It needs a lot of change to get there, change that must begin in the beginning. A novel has to be connected, has to have a current, from the start. And that means I'd be changing a lot in this next draft to make that identity problem THE HEART of the novel though could be this: he wants to fit but he doesn't.
Structure is always a struggle for me. If a novel becomes fragmented by an unclear center then it's hard for it to keep that narrative momentum it needs. A novel needs to advance—characters have to change and narrative deepen-- or the reader gets bored.
Or so I think today.
I imagine different hearts of the novel, different centers, and I try to organically get to one, but I don't think I have yet. I mean I have several ideas about what might be at the heart of this novel, but they're not entirely clear to me.
This could be a novel about someone who doesn't fit into his world and is trying to fit in-- but it isn't that novel now. It needs a lot of change to get there, change that must begin in the beginning. A novel has to be connected, has to have a current, from the start. And that means I'd be changing a lot in this next draft to make that identity problem THE HEART of the novel though could be this: he wants to fit but he doesn't.
Structure is always a struggle for me. If a novel becomes fragmented by an unclear center then it's hard for it to keep that narrative momentum it needs. A novel needs to advance—characters have to change and narrative deepen-- or the reader gets bored.
Or so I think today.
