Three Disasters Plus an Ending

I just read something that might save my novel:

I like to structure a story as "three disasters plus an ending". Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don't know if this is the ideal structure, it's just my personal taste.

If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces Act 3 which wraps things up. It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the protagonist's attempts to "fix things". Things just get worse and worse.

From Randy Ingermanson's How to Write a Novel: The Snowflake Method

You know how sometimes you know things, but you don't know that you know them until someone says them to you in a new way?

Yeah, that's what I'm feeling right now. My protagonist isn't trying to fix anything. She isn't even trying to DO anything! She's just having stuff happen to her.

No wonder I'm bored! Time to spice things up!

Under-The-Bed Books

I'm at the point in NaNo when I'm behind, I'm bored with my own story (never a good sign) and I'm pretty much convinced that I'm the worst writer ever.

So I dug out some of my inspirational books to try to get back on track. Here's what's resonating with me today.

Writing a book is exactly like love. You don't hold back. You give it everything you have. If it doesn't work out, you're heartbroken, but you move forward and start again anyway. You have to.

You don't hold some of yourself in reserve. It's all or nothing. There are no guarantees. If one book doesn't work out, you figure out why. How can you do things differently next time? If you hold back from the book, it won't fully reveal itself. You write each book, utterly and completely giving yourself to it. Some will end up under the bed. And some just might end up brilliant.

Heather Sellers, Chapter After Chapter

So, I'm giving myself permission to suck. This might be a learning book. It might be an under-the-bed book. But I'll never know if I don't finish it.

Online Conferences

Over on LiveJournal, a group of writers are hosting Bittercon — an online writing convention for those of us who couldn't afford to go to ComiCon and other genre conventions held over the summer around the country. Discussions are going on now.

Drop by and join the conversation if you're interested.

Another virtual writing convention is the Muse Online Writer's Conference for writers of all disciplines and genres. The Muse conference will take place in real time, October 13–19, with workshops and panel discussions exactly like a traditional writing conference, simply taking place entirely online.

Both are free and open to everyone. Let me know if you find anything exciting!

On Creating Culture

I'm reading Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Clinic, and came across this gem:

So you head into your own work, and you're writing along, and maybe everything feels fine, or maybe you get an inkling that you can hear guys pulling on ropes and scooting sets into place on the other side of your nice little backdrop. So you stop. You read back through and look at what you've done and you discover, depending on the genre you're writing in, that:

• Your fantasy novel contains only paladins, clerics, bards, rogues and healers, and maybe the occasional barmaid or whore.
• Your literary novel contains only university students, postgrads, professors, and maybe the occasional irritated parent.
• Your romance novel contains only twentysomething women and well-employed thirtysomething men, and maybe the occasional unplanned pregnancy.
• Your suspense or mystery novel contains only scumbags, victims, and detectives, and the occasional useful cop.
• Your science fiction novel contains only geniuses—whether human or alien—and one token woman.

Or something very like this. You discover that you don't have a world.

You don't have a culture. You don't even have a societal cross-section that could survive for a week on a desert island. Nobody knows how to cook, nobody knows how to start a fire, nobody knows how to find food, or how to tell what's edible, nobody knows how to keep excrement out of the drinking water (or the genre equivalents). You aren't writing rich and full and round. You're writing a skeletal
woman on a catwalk, and if you take the time to listen, you can hear
the wind blowing through her ribs.

That's not gonna be good for anybody.

In writing, skinny is horrible, thin is bad, stocky is survivable, fat is where all the flavor is....but bloat sucks.

I think I relate to this because I've definitely written a few that fit that pattern (*ticks off: fantasy novel, literary novel screenplay, science fiction novel — though, to my credit, there were THREE women…)