More Rewrites

I'm sure you're all tired of hearing me talk about rewrites, but I promise this is the last one.

I've gone through a rewrite of 30-60 explaining the whole prophecy and mission and everyone's roles in more direct and deliberate terms. At this time I wanted to share a kernel of wisdom.

Simpler is better.

Is there an easier way to say things? Are you using fifteen words when five will suffice? Passive voice, purple prose and long windedness slows your plot down and confuses your reader. Here's my anecdote for the situation.

In Threadcaster God is gone. Like, he left - vanished - caught the last train for the coast, all that jazz. As a result people are getting cursed. In the book I explain this one sentence: God left and the people were cursed. with three paragraphs of flowery prose and two pages of explanation making sure my audience and my characters understood what I wanted them to without drawing false conclusions. So for this rewrite I went back in and explained the whole thing as "God left and the people were Cursed and this is how you fix it" and suddenly both Cat and the audience understood without the pages and paragraphs! Everything's better, everyone's happy.

So yeah, there's my wisdom. Use the fancy language if you have to, but don't overindulge, it will get out of hand and then you'll need to do four rewrites. Peace out.

Back on Track

Whew... okay! Everything is back how it was. I kept the good additions, the tweaks in character and pacing, and nixed that annoying contrivance set to establish false urgency; because that's what it was: FALSE urgency. I spent more time making my characters remind each other how urgent it was than I spent developing their relationship. It drove a wedge between my mains and kept everyone unhappy including me. I'm better off without it.

Progress wise I'm back in the realm of 60-90... that dreaded pie slice that has dogged me for so long. I'll tell you all when I get back to Kindle parts and have to snip her out again. My Betas tell me they don't miss her at all from the previous pages where she was summarily amputated. Just goes to show you that I didn't really need her to start with. I plan to write an obituary on her later when she's 100% gone.

For those friends who keep track of me on facebook and instant messenger I'm sorry I've been so absent. I've been keeping my chat streams off so I can get down to writing. I never make any progress when it's on - too choppy. I'll be back later when this stuff is sorted out.

If I don't post another blog I wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! You can keep up with me on Twitter (@threadcaster , @jenniferstolzer ) facebook and tumblr (jameson9101322)

Crisis, breakdown and an emotional low

I have ruined my book.

It was doing fine. I loved it. I believed in the characters then suddenly I get some feedback.

"It needs urgency" my reviewer said. So I devised a plan... include a day in which things take place. Suddenly everything sucks.

I no longer know what's happening or what to do. I'm "fixing" things with patches I haven't preplotted out and messing with things I swore I'd never again touch. I'm at a crippling emotional low as I reconsider the value of everything I've made.

This book sucks, it'll never sell, It's a wasted effort, I'm a horrible author.

Why did this happen? Why have I fallen into this hole and how can I get back out of it?

First question I have to ask myself is was the edit worth it? Do I believe in the concept of the new story element? Well yes... on paper I believe in it fine. Utilizing it, however, has thrown me for a loop. I've edited it fifteen times... how can I use the same idea with less invasion?

Maybe I just namedrop it like it's not a big deal? No, it's a story thread... ugh...

Maybe I leave it out of the part that's confusing - aka the prophecy. We learn about the Brushcaster betrayal later in the game. Build it back up about the Curses again like I did last time.

Maybe I put this goddamn book on a shelf for another three years and rewrite it then.

I'm really miserable right now, you guys, I'm seriously considering abandoning ship and going to a previous draft where this addition didn't exist... at least to write ahead. I'm so tired of being stuck in the same ninety pages.

This blog post is more for my own frustration because my previous strategies haven't helped. I tried to talk it out but my sounding board didn't care. I tried to write it on paper and failed. I tried putting it together in the draft and sucked desperately.

All I ask from my audience right now is prayer - God's the only guidance I can trust at this point.

A sense of urgency

So I share 30 pages of Threadcaster at a time with a few close friends and mentors. They are all extremely patient with me - especially since I keep rewriting and rewriting things they've already seen, but it's their feedback that makes it necessary possible. Yesterday I got such a piece of feedback from fellow author Peter H Green. He said "Everything flows fine but there is no sense of urgency. You've got the pull toward the goal, but I don't feel any push."

Sense of Urgency huh? This posed a dilemma. My story has plenty of conflict starting around page 65... but up to that point it's getting to know the characters and getting used to the world they live in. I 100% believe this is a good thing - my world is complicated, it has rules and traditions the reader must understand to follow the rest of the story. Still a lack of urgency is a very real problem and it does not a good writer make if you ignore the input of your betas just because it's a little work.

So I thought about ways to build urgency - how about a villain actively working against the players through the plot? No... I do have villains but they are very powerful people who's leverage on the beginning of the book would probably keep our reluctant hero from agreeing to go without three pages of combatant dialog. No, the Brushcasters need to stay where they are.

What about a ticking clock? A time limit would impose some urgency and up Cat and Peter's emotional dilemma because a rush to save the world is a rush to put poor Pete in an early grave. That could do... it can't just be contrived though. I need to find a way to get it in without it creating an audience perceived False Urgency. Otherwise known as the "Just'cuz"es.

A "Just'cuz" is when an author's fingers start to show. "Why did he do that?" Author - "Just because." "Why did he decide to go there?" Author -"Just 'cause". "It was extremely lucky that he went to that town to run into the next action scene." - "Yeah, I needed him there for the plot"

The Just'cuzzes are as bad a disease as the Yes-mans and the Bamboo Traps. These things pander to the audience and insult their intelligence. I needed to find an integrated way to up the intensity that isn't Lady Creven saying "'By the way, I'd like you to complete this dangerous journey in about a week... Thursday's my only free day, you see. Does that fit in your schedule?" So what solution did I decide to employ? Well... it's all a matter of festivity.

I've had an elaborate backstory for a while now, but I took it out of the book because a large part of it had nothing to do with Cat. It still doesn't, really, but it has a lot to do with the rest of her world. I used the backstory as a stage and invented this great big huge festival in which the people of the Valley try to fulfill the same prophecy Cat and Peter are trying to fulfill in the book. This festival takes place on a specific day and time - the only day and time that "success" can take place. Unfortunately that festival day is a week away. Cat's going to have to hurry to keep the world from dying.

This solution is super. I can use the festival theme throughout as Cat moves from town to town. We see the decorations going up; the signs and festivities and how hopeful the people are that this will finally work. Little do they know that Cat's the one REALLY trying to fulfill the prophecy and the Brushcasters are actively trying to stop her. It gives us a C story that is separate from Cat's main quest but parallel so I don't have to cut away to any sidescenes. I've already implemented it up to a point. I have a little more rewriting to do before it's done... but I think I'm content. It definitely gets the beginning of the quest to go a bit faster.

The Ensemble Cast: a Collection of Names

I thought it would be fun to share a little wisdom I've found writing a book with a very large cast and a bit of a tactic I use to implement it.

Threadcaster, as some know, is a quest story - Cat and her horribly afflicted friends travel their small world on a grand adventure. They meet a lot of people on their journey - some important, some not so important, some only important later on. So the questions is - if you meet ten new people every place you go how do you help your readers keep it straight? The answer I've found is as simple as ABC.

That's right; the Alphabet. Reading is a visual activity as much as an aural one and having a lot of characters with similar names can be very confusing. For the eye, starting the name with different letters helps the reader differentiate at first glance - if the character is the only person in the whole book whose name starts with "F" then the reader will instantly say "Oh! It's the "F" name guy!" when he shows up again. Let's apply this to Threadcaster.

As a bit of an exercise I opened a blank document and listed all the letters A-Z in rows, then filled all the names of people we meet with any significance. I do a pretty good job of this already it seems ... but some letters (A, J, and M as it turns out) had an uneven number of characters listed. These might get confusing so I've taken some of the minor characters out and either not named them at all (Is it really important to learn the Mayor's first and last name?) or renamed them (Ashley is a very minor character tucked in with some important ones like Aiden... so I swapped her for Heather since I only had one H.)

I try not to name two characters in the same place with the same letter unless it's plot-appropriate, and I try to make reoccurring side-characters the only ones in their list. This way I think the cast, although large, is a little easier for the brain to sort - and if there's one thing I pride myself on in this book is how easy I want it to read and understand. It's taking a lot of work and brainpower on thsi end of the pen but for you, noble readers, I hope it's pretty easy.

A discovery

So today I discovered I'm a writer.

I know that seems silly what with me having already completed a novel, but let me explain. I had a meeting today with a very very nice local business consultant ready and willing to learn about my illustration work and how he could help me. Instead of whipping out my work and expounding on how accomplished, useful and willing I am I prattled on forever about writing - not necessarily Threadcaster, I didn't dwell on the novel itself - but about writing in general and being in writing groups and how writing works and my plans for publication. I met with him hoping to get leads on a job for my illustration and by natural conversational happenstance I wasted the whole time on my other career.

I guess that means that Writing is my primary passion then huh? I can do the rest, but when asked what I want to be doing Threadcaster is it. It is what I want to be working on, it's what I want to put my hours and invest my future in. I'm discouraged because this seems like a really stupid thing to have done, but I guess it's true now. The conversation wouldn't have happened if I wasn't being honest.

So hi everyone, I'm a writer. Lets hold hands and pray this isn't a huge mistake in priorities.

Welcome to Threadcaster.com!

That's right! Threadcaster now has a domain. It's sleeker and classier than it's ever been before - special thanks to the Rampant Creative group (www.therampant.com) for their help in designing and building it.

For those watching the blogspot fear not - for it is the same and all the blogger features remain they're just prettier. I'm excited for Threadcaster to have a real web presence - it's like the book is becoming a real thing.

Now back to editing it!