Goal setting for aspiring writers
While googling for articles about developing goals for my novel’s characters, I chanced upon a how-to for personal goal setting.
I’ve blown my deadlines a couple of times, but it’s nice that she added that bit about being kind to ourselves. Because aren’t we all our own worst critics?
Another one from Disher:
It is pointless to wait for inspiration. The brilliant idea that you write down at 2 a.m. on the notebook by your bed (ed: or in the shower!) may be no more than a sentence that has lost its force by the next morning, whereas sitting down every day and writing a page whether you feel like it or not will produce 365 pages by the end of the year.
Bash through! Just bash through!
Note to self: give my characters goals
yWriter (and I’ll talk about that lovely, God-send freeware some day) has space in each character profile to enter that character’s goals.
Just read Character External Goals: Why Characters Need Super-Objectives for Their Story Arcs.
Something else to work on.
How to: form your plot and character
So here’s what I tried last night.
I asked 2 things of each of my characters yesterday:
- What is it about the nature and personality of [insert character here] that makes him/her choose one action over another?
- How has the character changed by the end of the book?
So far, so good. I’ve written short answers for about 5 characters, but it’s already spurred me to consider other details about them. Like how they express what they’re feeling non-verbally. How they dress and stand. And because I’m refining quite a few of my best-loved characters from Failed Draft#2, I already have pictures of what some of them might look like.
By the way, istockphoto and Getty Images can be treasure troves. But pictures of George Clooney can also be quite the inspiration. *sigh*
As for plot, I’m trying something else out. Because characters obviously interact and each have their own development arc, I’m now trying to cobble together a loose outline of each sub-conflict. So for instance, I started putting together a rough outline of a love triangle last night (gotta love those), limiting it only to the actions of the three main characters in this plot line.
The idea is to come up with a few more of these outlines for combinations of characters, before finally trying to weave all plots together in sequential order.
That’s the idea, anyway. I’ll tell you later if it sucks.
Introducing structure to my writing
I’ve entitled this draft “By the book”, only because that’s precisely what I’m trying to do with this version. With the last 2 magnum opi (heh) and the countless other small ones before those, I had grabbed the bull by its proverbial horns and simply started writing.
Only to find that it’s one thing to write an essay. It’s quite the other to write a book.
Structure. My draft lacked structure. My characters lacked structure. And in my arrogance and naivete, I had marched on and started writing without answering some pretty fundamental questions about who my characters are and where they wanted to go.
Which meant that on some days, my characters were manic or mellow, depending on how much caffeine I’d inhaled. Which meant, after a while, that they all started to meld together somehow at about the 60,000 mark and become a giant chorus of Ho Hum.
I’ve met writers who say that they write without an outline. They just sit in front of the computer and let their imaginations (and the voices in their heads) take over. I’ve found that I cannot do that. As much as I would love to be that talented, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I first need to understand a few more fundamentals about plot and character, before I let the words drip from my fingertips.
Enter Garry Disher.
I don’t know who he is, and I have no real idea of his writing credentials apart from what they printed inside the book cover. But I picked up his book, “Writing Fiction: An introduction to the craft” at the Lifeline bookfair this March for $2, and even though it was first published in 1983, I figured the principles aren’t too different.
Also,
- It’s thin, which is good because I’m impatient.
- It’s to the point, which is even better (see point one).
- It’s a start.
Because you know what they say about insanity… it’s doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome.
Here’s to trying something new.
