Jamie Ferguson's Blog, page 20

Novels are big

I’ve written one before so you’d think this wouldn’t be a surprise, but wow. Writing a novel is way more work than a short story, or even a novella. It’s not just that it’s a longer work. You have to keep track of tons of details, like suppose you mention that your character is wearing a jacket in one scene, then the next time you’re in their point of view they’re wearing a T-shirt. Where did the jacket go? And in case you’re wondering, in my current novel one of the characters is wearing a j...

Sculpting a story

I love editing.

Don’t get me wrong – I love writing first drafts as well. They’re fun in an entirely different way. But editing – at least editing my own work – allows me to make changes that can turn a good story into (hopefully!) a great story.

These can be tiny, subtle changes, like adding in sensory details or description, or explaining the physical sensations a character feels in a particular sensation. Or they can be hefty changes, like adding a new scene, or taking a three-page secti...

Charts and lists and plans

I now have a scene list for the novel, as well as an outline, and it’s been tremendously helpful. In the past I’ve worked with what was essentially a combination of a scene list and an outline, but for this book I wanted to track more details, so I have two separate documents.

My old approach tracked the following:

chapter each scene in the chapter which viewpoint each scene was from details of what happened in each scene chapter cliffhanger time/day

That sounds fine and dandy, and it was d...

Let the laboring begin

The past week was full of extracurricular events – the best was going to opening night for the opera Aida. It was so much fun I’m planning on buying season tickets next year. Next year they’ll have a performance of La fanciulla del West, which was originally set during the Gold Rush in California (no, I didn’t know that, but Wikipedia did). Next year’s performance will be set in Colorado instead. How awesome is that?!? I often write historical fiction set in the old West, so for me at least i...

It’s a date

It’s not firm enough to announce yet, but I’ve set a date for the release of my next novel. Yay!!!

This sounds very exciting – and it is! But there’s a lot of work to do before publication. In addition to my part I’m hiring a cover designer and an editor, so until I get all three of our schedules coordinated I can’t be certain that my arbitrarily selected date is actually doable. But that’s okay – my deadline for completing the manuscript will stay the same, and that’s the most important part...

So far, so good

So far outlining seems like a mostly good thing. Last weekend I wrote a complete outline of the short story I’ve been working on (Bewitchery). At the time I thought two things: whew, what a lot of work! and: wow, I addressed all the questions I’d have while writing the story. How awesome is that?

Pretty awesome, but as stories do, this one has changed a bit … I added two scenes today, introduced another point of view character (who was already in the story, but as a side character), and chan...

Planning to finish

I used to start writing stories when I knew the beginning (kind of hard to ‘start’ otherwise), and sometimes the middle or end – but never both. I wrote a lot of great story beginnings, but found I’d almost always have no idea what was supposed to happen next. I have a nice collection of stories I may never find endings for …

Once I recognized what was happening, I instituted a rule: never start writing a story unless I know how it ends. Okay, it’s really more of a guideline since I have no...

Versions of Alice – Guest Post by DeAnna Knippling

I met DeAnna at a writing workshop on the Oregon Coast a few years ago. We read each other’s short stories for one assignment, and hers was so well done I got all the way to the end before I remembered what I was supposed to be doing and had to start over.

DeAnna recently published Alice’s Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts, a delightful retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in which Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) is a zombie. DeAnna’s love for the classic tale come...

Caring for your choppers

One of the fun parts about working on a story set in a different time and place is learning how people lived then. For example, a few years ago I wrote a short story about a stagecoach robbery, and I learned that in some coaches strips of leather (called ‘thorough braces’) supported the body of the coach and allowed it to swing, providing a form of shock absorption. I didn’t explicitly mention that in my story, but reading about how this worked helped me to write a more realistic description...

Caring for your Choppers

One of the fun parts about working on a story set in a different time and place is learning how people lived then. For example, a few years ago I wrote a short story about a stagecoach robbery, and I learned that in some coaches strips of leather (called ‘thorough braces’) supported the body of the coach and allowed it to swing, providing a form of shock absorption. I didn’t explicitly mention that in my story, but reading about how this worked helped me to write a more realistic description...