When I began writing...

[Caged Maiden]

Man, oh man. I tell ya. This stuff is hard, isn't it?

When I began writing (and up until last week), I thought things were getting better.

Unfortunately, I now know I have no idea how to tell a story.

I can write scenes, really gripping ones. I can make deep and interesting characters, with clear perspectives and loud voices. I can show details in meaningful ways, and get to pertinent things without feeling the need to show everything in the room or on a person. I have some great concepts. But I can't make decisions, and I lack followthrough.

My journey has changed. I'm no longer trying to jump from one interesting scene to another, developing secrets and waiting to spring surprises. Nope. Instead, I'm reading all I can about developing a plot and story structure, and watching dozens of movies to identify which characteristics of story-telling fit into which kind of story.

This is a mess, people. I'm completely lost. I'm drowning in a murky swamp.

I mean, I KNEW what I was supposed to do. At least in theory. But now I understand that a story isn't a string of interesting scenes with a great character. And that truth is really hard to swallow, honestly. I mean, I had a beginning, middle, and end. I had a purpose for the character and a love story, and an antagonist. But I didn't have a real plot, a reason why things progress in a certain way. I was sort of dragging my character around through a scenario, rather than letting her choose a path and make her own life happen. I didn't have foresight, I guess is what i'm trying to say. So, when a scene popped up that was really good...it didn't necessarily fit in with anything around it. I had a lot of isolated scenes that were written well enough, but they didn't form a story. And until a few days ago...I didn't really understand that.

So, now begins another journey. time to learn some stuff that I wasn't ready to grasp before. AAK! I just want to be at the finish line already! Writing is the hardest thing I've ever done!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Now that is a fascinating revelation. It's always disturbing what flaws may be sitting beneath our noses without our recognizing them. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of how you achieved completed works with a disconnected plot structure?

EDIT: I think most times, this sort of issue would crop up in the muck of the middle and end in an incomplete ms. Although I think I have seen movies and maybe even a sotyr here or there that seemed to be stretching hard to create cool scenes without a real basis.

Man, oh man. I tell ya. This stuff is hard, isn't it?

When I began writing (and up until last week), I thought things were getting better.

Unfortunately, I now know I have no idea how to tell a story.

I can write scenes, really gripping ones. I can make deep and interesting characters, with clear perspectives and loud voices. I can show details in meaningful ways, and get to pertinent things without feeling the need to show everything in the room or on a person. I have some great concepts. But I can't make decisions, and I lack followthrough.

My journey has changed. I'm no longer trying to jump from one interesting scene to another, developing secrets and waiting to spring surprises. Nope. Instead, I'm reading all I can about developing a plot and story structure, and watching dozens of movies to identify which characteristics of story-telling fit into which kind of story.

This is a mess, people. I'm completely lost. I'm drowning in a murky swamp.

I mean, I KNEW what I was supposed to do. At least in theory. But now I understand that a story isn't a string of interesting scenes with a great character. And that truth is really hard to swallow, honestly. I mean, I had a beginning, middle, and end. I had a purpose for the character and a love story, and an antagonist. But I didn't have a real plot, a reason why things progress in a certain way. I was sort of dragging my character around through a scenario, rather than letting her choose a path and make her own life happen. I didn't have foresight, I guess is what i'm trying to say. So, when a scene popped up that was really good...it didn't necessarily fit in with anything around it. I had a lot of isolated scenes that were written well enough, but they didn't form a story. And until a few days ago...I didn't really understand that.

So, now begins another journey. time to learn some stuff that I wasn't ready to grasp before. AAK! I just want to be at the finish line already! Writing is the hardest thing I've ever done!

 

[FifthView]

The truly absurd thing is spending a decade or more reading heavily as a teen/YA, and then sitting down at a computer (or for those of us old enough, a typewriter) and discovering that being exposed to so much great writing didn't automatically imbue us with storytelling ability. What, osmosis isn't a thing? Heh.

 

[Caged Maiden]

@ D...I have a dozen of them if you're ready with your barf bags and a few days...


HA! No seriously. I'll tell you.

I have one story I began in 2011, for nano. I wrote it over two nano months, set 6 months apart. 100k words done in 8 weeks, in two sessions. I spent 18 months editing it and tried so hard to bring it together, but I know it's still a mess, structure-wise.

The story is 50% love story and 50% spy games. Political intrigue, romantic relationships that are made and broken, a really identifiable antagonist (which may have been a first for me), and blood, sex, and danger (all my favorite things).

It didn't have a real path. If I summarize the plot, it probably doesn't sound half terrible. Lemme give it a go (all secrets revealed, don't read if you actually want to read the book):

Spoiler: plot and secrets

It opens with a middle-age woman who sneaks into a cathedral to meet the antagonist. She KNOWS he killed her son (reader won't find out for a long time, but it's their son). But he denies it and she has a knife and was ready to kill him, but she can't do it. She leaves when someone else knocks on the door, and then she listens to the conversation. A lawyer is concerned about a friend who died, and the cleric (antagonist) should have been able to stop it. Instead, he wants to send the lawyer out to avenge the friend as an assassin. The lawyer laughs and says he's using the law to get revenge. From there, the woman follows the lawyer, rather than trying to kill the cleric. She goes after him and they become partners.

Two years later, after that one scene, the story opens.

The woman is trying to get her old friend out of jail before his execution. She has a plan for getting revenge on the cleric who killed her son, too. The scene is unfocused and I like talk about all there of her plans in it. This is where the trouble begins...

The next part of the story opens with a young woman and her lover, a neighboring nobleman. As far as she's concerned, her life is great. Her brothers leave her alone, her father is blissfully ignorant of everything except his business, the stable boy is her best friend and he helps her sneak out to meet her boyfriend, life is good. But in her opening scene, her father tells her she's going to marry the sheriff's son. Bummer.

she meets the guy, and he's unimpressive in every way, and when they try to talk, he's awkward and unfriendly (he is mourning and just witnessed a public execution that has left him really shaken.

There's danger in the countryside, a murderer on the loose. And one night when the young woman is going to meet her boyfriend, a man tries to kidnap her. But the stable boy kills the guy and they both are scared and relieved, and then the brother comes and looks at who the masked intruder was, and he's another noble neighbor...so they have to hide the body or the boy will hang for killing a man of rank. The girl goes to the city, married her betrothed, and life gets uncomfortable. Rather than talk of love or the future, her husband talks about secrets. He gives her a room in his house and doesn't make any attempt to encourage a relationship of any kind.

Meanwhile, the spy plot develops and the old woman and her crew are trying to corner the evil cleric into incriminating himself for a multitude of crimes. The greater theme of the story is social reform, and if they kill this guy, nothing will change in the town. They need to expose the rampant corruption so that the republic no longer is in danger of being held hostage by a rogue cleric with his own agenda. They do some spying, get some information, connect some unexpected people to the cleric's network of agents, and stye discover they have a rat in their network, someone who is informing the cleric about them.

The marriage isn't going well in the city, and while some parts are meant to be funny, it's really just beating around the bush. The young woman tries to reach out to her husband, and he reaffirms his solitariness and rebuffs her. He is working with the cleric on a treasonous legal matter that will gain influence and resources for the cleric, but if discovered, will cost the husband his life. He grows more paranoid and anxious, and the last thing he wants is to drag a new wife into his real life.

They finally do find a couple small ways to connect and communicate, and it looks like they might actually get along. But then they attend a party and the ex-lover is there and stirs up a bunch of trouble. Her hopes of a happy home life are pretty much ruined. (well, for one scene, anyways, it gets better soon)

The spies have some infighting, some romance, some dangerous decisions, including intercepting a group of mercenaries sent to assassinate one of the cleric's main political rivals, a man who wants to enact the social reform that the spies do. The old woman and her young mercenary friend go to stop that, but they get stranded in a bad situation, and it brings to light the tenuous relationship between them (she doesn't tell him the whole truth on anything, and she's risked his life more than once, and he's pretty upset about it). When they get home, he leaves the spy group. She has to find him before her partners do, or they'll kill her ally. But their reunion exposes their deep feelings of regret and their consuming need for revenge against this cleric who ruined both their lives and countless others.

The married couple experience a moment of actual happiness, getting to know each other. But the husband discovers the wife kept a secret from him, and after discovering it, he sends her home to her father, not indicating why, or whether he'll come get her in the future.

The cleric's allies are powerful and they make a couple moves, killing one of the agents for the spy group. Someone the old woman was just about to kill because she thought he was the rat. After planning to kill someone and then seeing him already mutilated, the woman is despondent. She knew their plan was dangerous, but she doesn't want to end up like that dead guy, and she doesn't want it for any of her friends, either. She unilaterally decides that the only thing to do is to kill the cleric so no one else dies. but it's a suicide mission. The mercenary friend follows her and basically saves her from herself. He comes up with a better plan than trying to outmaneuver the cleric, but to turn the tables and put him on the reactive side of their moves. (chess is another major theme of this story, actually). Anyways, so they devise a way to incriminate one of his allies, making it look like he's betraying the cleric.

Only problem is, that guy is the brother of the married girl's ex-lover.

The married couple patch their problems, but right after that, a whore comes to the door in the middle of the night, and the husband leaves with her. The wife decides she's done with him. We follow him for a bit as he meets the spy group, and learn he's their third partner (with the old woman and the guy on the gallows). Together, they're trying to bring down this cleric, but the husband is at risk of being called a traitor if he gets caught for his part of the plan. And the guy on the gallows doesn't trust the husband, and they hate each other. The old woman says she's done communicating with both of them until they find out who the rat is. She's got another plan and has to go do it.

When the husband gets home, he has to patching stuff up with his wife, they have a fight and honesty comes out, and they decide they love each other.

However, when the spies mess with the cleric's ally, some bad stuff happens and as a result, they mess with the husband by kidnapping his wife. The plan is to trade the wife for the illegal documents the cleric wants. But the ex-lover tries to help his brother, only to discover the girl and her situation, and he decides to help her husband free her and his brother escape town.

IN that kidnapping, the girl's stable boy best friend is mortally wounded, and when they all get back home, the boy is dying, the husband is a liar and the girl doesn't trust him, and the husband has to go finish this terrible job with the old woman spy.

The boy dies, the girl and the mercenary guarding her go stay with her uncle, and the husband and old woman hurry to stop what ultimately was the cleric's big plan--to blow up the pope. They get there just in time to see HOW the cleric is going to do it, and they try to dismantle the trap, but are too late. What the spectators see is the husband basically running at the pope, and trying to blow him up. He dies and the pope lives, and no one knows the cleric was behind it in the first place...except the spies.

In the end, the girl has to bury her best friend and her husband. The husband's father's career is ruined (he was sheriff). The spies didn't get their social reform because it looks like the lawyer tried to kill the pope, and the cleric is only arrested because he was exposed for the treason (when the lawyer died, there was no more risk to him of exposing the truth, so they let the information leak to the authorities). He will go to prison but disappears and doesn't even stand trial for treason.

The girl is left alone in her husband's house, a place she never liked, and she's ready to go home to her father.

But I planned a sequel, and I think at the beginning of that, I'd show that just before she leaves, the old woman shows up at the door and tells her she's going after the cleric...if the girl wants to join her.

So...the problem with this story is that i have some good scenes and some exciting characters. Even the overall mood of the story is fine. But the scenes are disjointed, some of them serve to disorient a reader, rather than pointing at the end goal, and I think it's just generally disorganized and chaotic. That's sort of my MO, though. Hope that clarifies my weakness and why I need to overcome it.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Both of my books seem disjointed and chaotic once you first start reading, but all of the scenes weave into each other by the end. You have so fantastic ideas, by the way.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I experienced a movie last night that had the Disjointed feel, Christmas with the Kranks, or some such thing I watched with the kids. It never feels like a coherent story with functioning characters. Now this is not a stucture thing for this movie, it's a classic 3 act story, it just doesn't work. I also think we see the result of a lot of intersting bits being thrown together poorly, the movie isn't even that funny, which it probably should be. Instead it's a waste of a solid cast, where the most interesting character is Marty (Austin Pendleton of the classic Steppenwolf Theater) and even he falls flat because of such a lame attempt at story telling. Movies are interesting creatures, they are good ways to see story flaws in less time than pouring through novels, LOL.

Part of the issue is probably high concept, where a big idea is force fed into a 3 act structure and rewritten to death.

 

[Chessie]

I experienced a movie last night that had the Disjointed feel, Christmas with the Kranks, or some such thing I watched with the kids. It never feels like a coherent story with functioning characters. Now this is not a stucture thing for this movie, it's a classic 3 act story, it just doesn't work. I also think we see the result of a lot of intersting bits being thrown together poorly, the movie isn't even that funny, which it probably should be. Instead it's a waste of a solid cast, where the most interesting character is Marty (Austin Pendleton of the classic Steppenwolf Theater) and even he falls flat because of such a lame attempt at story telling. Movies are interesting creatures, they are good ways to see story flaws in less time than pouring through novels, LOL.

Part of the issue is probably high concept, where a big idea is force fed into a 3 act structure and rewritten to death.

Duuuuudddeee...DO NOT watch Carnage Park. Worst horror movie EVER currently on Netflix. I loved the way it was filmed. Loved the cult-classic vibe to it. The acting was...meh. Everything else was...siiighhh. The female protagonist made stupid decision after stupid decision after stupid decision after an even stupidder decision--in a never ending vicious cycle. It was so bad, my husband turned it off 3/4 of the way through and we went to bed disappointed.

This taught me something valuable: stupid characters aren't worth investing in.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Doesn't sound that bad, but one never knows until seeing in full. Do you have it broken into the classic 3 act stucture?

A hangover from screenwriting is that I am always leery of a two-years-earlier opening. Yeah, they happen and can work, but so often they don't... basically a form of flashback/forward. I would rather see it worked into the main body of the story.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Fortunately I learned (mostly) not to watch horror flicks at all anymore. Every now and again I indulge, but almost always never make it through.

Duuuuudddeee...DO NOT watch Carnage Park. Worst horror movie EVER currently on Netflix. I loved the way it was filmed. Loved the cult-classic vibe to it. The acting was...meh. Everything else was...siiighhh. The female protagonist made stupid decision after stupid decision after stupid decision after an even stupidder decision--in a never ending vicious cycle. It was so bad, my husband turned it off 3/4 of the way through and we went to bed disappointed.

This taught me something valuable: stupid characters aren't worth investing in.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

Man, oh man. I tell ya. This stuff is hard, isn't it?

The more I learn, the harder the task appears to become.

When I began writing (and up until last week), I thought things were getting better.

Unfortunately, I now know I have no idea how to tell a story.

I could quote Shakespeare here, about fools thinking themselves wise and wise people not thinking too highly of the vast knowledge they have. When you come to the realization in a field that you don't know as much as you thought you did, then you're an expert.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

The more I learn, the harder the task appears to become.


I could quote Shakespeare here, about fools thinking themselves wise and wise people not thinking too highly of the vast knowledge they have. When you come to the realization in a field that you don't know as much as you thought you did, then you're an expert.

Huh! I must be an expert in all things! Hooray me! Heh heh.