On Writing the Series, Part 2
by kateelliott on Sep.22, 2009, under Kate Elliott and Ken Scholes
KEN:
How does your process differ from mine? Is it more organic? Do you work from outlines? How much of the bones of the story do you have before you start adding the meat and muscle?
KATE:
First of all, your method of working is really cool. And interesting. And apparently effective and efficient. Me: not so efficient.
Begin with the end in mind. That’s generally my motto. I would say that I always have to know where I’m headed before I can make a good start. “Where I’m headed” may be an event, an outcome, an emotional catharsis, or a tonal mood, but I need to know where the ship is coming in, to mix my metaphors a bit.
I also find that I have to know what the end point is in order to understand the subtler undercurrents that should be flowing through the entire stream of the narrative (to mix my metaphors a little more).
Usually I have a strong mental architecture of what needs to happen not just to get where I’m going but to explore and illuminate the characters’ journeys. I usually don’t write preliminary outlines; I’m more likely to make a lot of notes, sketch out in their bones a few crucial scenes that seem very vivid in my mind (a few of which will end up never making it onto the page but some of which will appear very like my initial imagining), and then add haphazardly to those notes as I write. I sometimes end up lopping off plot lines and scenes and put them into a folder called “next volume.” I may draw crude flow charts, as I did with Traitors’ Gate because I had to layer in a bunch of plot lines in overlapping but correct order, like 4-dimensional knitting: “A must come first, but C has to happen before B because it sets up F which happens after but Character 3 has to have seen Y before they feel the impetus to do X.”
I should note that Traitors’ Gate, as the third of a trilogy, was constrained by what “had to happen” to get to the end I envisioned; I didn’t have much leeway in that book to stray from the path because I kept the path very tightly wound around the main spine of the plot. Anyway, I call this type of writing a “Mozart” book because Mozart supposedly composed speedily and with much of the architecture of the music already in his head.
My best example of a “Mozart” book is the two part The Sword of Heaven (published as An Earthly Crown and His Conquering Sword), which is a single novel published as a duology. I had been thinking about that novel for ten years before I wrote it, and I wrote what must be about 300,000 words in nine months because I knew exactly what I had to write. In revisions, I added two short scenes for clarification purposes, and did the usual line editing prose polish and so on, but it remains the cleanest book I have ever written in first draft. Ten years of letting it simmer on the back burner did wonders. It’s a pleasure to write this sort of novel because the composition flows so naturally. While details and scenes may change, or turn out differently than I expected, the overall whole remains coherent as I’m writing.
The other style of novel I sometimes call my Beethoven model, in which I hack and slash through the wilderness of doubt, despair, and wondering what the heck is going to come next. These books are far harder to draft, but I don’t find that I can predict how successful a book is by whether the first draft comes easily or with difficulty. I may make files of notes as I’m going. A must go to XB; meanwhile, J stumbles on the plot to kill the queen, and — oh, wait! — the queen is obviously in league with A! In such novels, like The Law of Becoming, I may be writing ahead of myself (as it were), or discovering elements of the plot as I go (see above). I may, as in tLoB, get hit sidelong with a huge plot point that I did not plan or even see coming but which I had clearly set up without knowing I was doing so. As a writer, I love this sense of being blindsided by my own world-building and character development. If I’ve done it right, then both the world and the characters will, because they have their own internal logic and consistency, create conflicts and resonances within the unfolding plot. Still, even with a Beethoven novel, I know my end point, and I know some of the main points–certain events or imagined scenes–that I need to touch on along the way.
Beyond that, mostly I would say that I conceive of a “series” as a narrative that examines consequences. If this happens, then what will the effect of that be on the characters and the society? That pretty much sums up most of what I’ve written.
Tomorrow: On writing novels.
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September 22nd, 2009 on 7:23 am
“As a writer, I love this sense of being blindsided by my own world-building and character development.”
Me too! I had a story that started off as a short story (which eventually evolved into the novel I keep telling myself I’m writing presently), with a vague outline (in my head) of the characters and the situation. At the time, only two or three of the characters were well drawn, but as the tale lengthened I began to find that some of the side characters were fascinating, complex and much more interesting than I had intended. So much so that when that character kicked it, several of my classmates (in a college fiction course) wanted me to retcon him back in.
I refused, of course. But I’ve never escaped the exhilaration of discovering something I didn’t know was there, and letting that, temporarily, lead my writing.
And, on a sort of related note, Kate, I wonder how you feel about the concept of a Muse? I’ve talked with other writers, and some of them are absolutely convinced that what comes out on the page is the product of their own fancy, something that was born, incubated, and nurtured without any outside help, and I’ve met a few who are just as convinced that their inspiration comes from a Muse, or a genius that feeds them, not the other way round. The concept has always fascinated me, and I wonder how you and Ken feel about it.
September 22nd, 2009 on 9:09 am
I use the concept of a Muse mostly for entertainment and self-deception. Let me tell you about him.
His name is Leroy. He lives in a trailer. He drives a Chevy and is missing some teeth. He likes to drink beer and blow stuff up on the weekends. But by day, he works the production line of my Story Factory.
He is not alone. H. Phinneas Smythe, a man who likes to wear white suits and sounds a good deal like Dr. Frasier Crane, is responsible for Quality Assurance and frequently meddles in Leroy’s work. Sometimes Leroy locks him in the trunk of his Mercedes. If he forgets to take away the cell phone, Smythe calls in the Chattering Head Monkeys.
Of course, in all seriousness, I think the writing flows out of the Soup of our Subconcious and is made up of the same raw material as our dreams with the added bonus of our higher brains layering in some bits conciously.
I don’t really believe there’s a Factory buried deep inside of me or a little gap-toothed redneck working the levers and cranking out fiction under his QA Manager’s suspicious eye.
Well, okay, maybe I believe it…a little.
September 22nd, 2009 on 12:40 pm
Adam, yes, your experience describes perfectly a certain kind of synergy that sometimes takes over during writing, when something that is not the conscious mind is driving the story. It’s a rush.
As for a Muse. I’m kind of prosaic in that I feel like I do all the writing, some of it with my conscious mind and some with my subconscious and unconscious (I’ve learned when to let go with my conscious controlling mind and let another element take over). Having said that, I do think that creativity is, if you will, a spark of something that we really can’t explain. Where that comes from, I can’t say (because I don’t know).
September 30th, 2009 on 5:08 am
Kate:
You talk about knowing with Traitors’ Gate what _has_ to happen. But don’t you find that sometimes your characters don’t want things to happen the way you think they have to happen? I loved TG and especially the amazing way you dealt with your characters, who did some things that truly surprised me–and that, I thought, was wonderful.
March 16th, 2010 on 9:44 pm
who da leet haxor lol