Advice or good books about finishing please

[BookCat]

gmw: I'm the opposite to you; I love editing, but hate writing the first draft. I like having something written which I can get my teeth into. Pre-computers, I would go through the draft with a green ballpoint, scribbling "YUCK" over badly written paragraphs and adding little numbers which refered to notes I kept on sheets of paper, detailing what needing to be changed. I then spent time rewriting section by section.
Editing is easier, but less satisfying, on screen. Structural changes are simpler to make too.

[gmw]

So treat your missing ending like an editing task. Scratch out something awful, write "Yuck" all over it, and then get to work

(Said with tongue in cheek, but who knows, it might even work for you.)

[BookCat]

The problem is that I need to have something to write 'Yuck' through!
Writing first drafts is such hard work.

[BookCat]

Sorry to raise the dead but nano is beginning soon and my intention is to finish the first draft of Long in the Tooth this November. In preparation for this, I was going through the Scrivener project and found a letter one of the main characters wrote to me (I'm crazy, I know).

"Dear author,

I am not at all happy with the way you’ve written my character. I’m so boring. Could you make me a little less “middle class housewife” ish please? This is such a dull stereotype. I can’t be very much fun for you to write either; but you will leave me in this existence long after you have finished writing even the final draft and sent me out into the world.

I’ll have to live this dull existence for all eternity. Please give me a more interesting aspect to my personality. Let me break out of the housewife (divorced) mould and LIVE. Perhaps I’m a secret serial killer, and I don’t mean cereal! Maybe I have some other secret vice. At the moment, the only interesting thing which happens to me happens in my dreams: I get bitten by a variation of vampires according to who I’m pissed off with that evening. There, make me use bad language sometimes, I can bloody well do it. Even Neil, a musician, doesn’t swear or smoke dope. He’s too much of a goody too.

Consider your poor readers! Do you honestly think they’ll plough through this boring story full of boring people? Or, having read a few pages, toss it aside for something more rivetting? That’s right, they’ll toss it aside. If they can be bothered, the reviews on SmashWords/Amazon will go something like:

“I’m glad this book was free, it was so boring that I couldn’t finish it. Life is too short to read bad books. I won’t be bothering with this author again.”

Yep, that’s what they’ll be saying.

So make me and my friends more interesting. Give us good bits and bad bits. Give us enemies and fears, secret vices and humour. And for goodness sake liven up the story. My ‘illness’ is going to clear up soon but you’ve only written 32k words! Yes, yes, I know you have to make me well enough to do all the things which occur later, but bring in another conflict before you end the health arc. Perhaps my damn ex gets in touch BEFORE the hospital appointment takes place?

Oh, Neil and Geoff are grumbling in a similar manner about their characters. Neil says he’s too good, despite his profession and Geoff says he’s a stereotypical uncaring male. Two extremes. They want some in-betweenness.
Why am I always asleep when the most interesting scenes occur? Okay, we know this isn’t a ‘vampire’ novel like Twilight (thank goodness), and you want a more ‘real world’ in which vampires don’t actually exist, but at least let me and the others ‘play’ vampires on the goth scene.
And when you take me to a goth club I don’t just want to stand around, talking to minor unrememberable characters who don’t appear again, I want SOMETHING TO HAPPEN.
The phone is ringing now, I expect it’s Geoff with something boring to say for another boring scene,

Yours, stereotypically,
Claire. (From Long in the Boredom)"

It's disheartening when even your characters don't like the book!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by BookCat

Sorry to raise the dead but nano is beginning soon and my intention is to finish the first draft of Long in the Tooth this November. In preparation for this, I was going through the Scrivener project and found a letter one of the main characters wrote to me (I'm crazy, I know).

"Dear author,

I am not at all happy with the way you’ve written my character. I’m so boring. Could you make me a little less “middle class housewife” ish please? This is such a dull stereotype. I can’t be very much fun for you to write either; but you will leave me in this existence long after you have finished writing even the final draft and sent me out into the world.

I’ll have to live this dull existence for all eternity. Please give me a more interesting aspect to my personality. Let me break out of the housewife (divorced) mould and LIVE. Perhaps I’m a secret serial killer, and I don’t mean cereal! Maybe I have some other secret vice. At the moment, the only interesting thing which happens to me happens in my dreams: I get bitten by a variation of vampires according to who I’m pissed off with that evening. There, make me use bad language sometimes, I can bloody well do it. Even Neil, a musician, doesn’t swear or smoke dope. He’s too much of a goody too.

Consider your poor readers! Do you honestly think they’ll plough through this boring story full of boring people? Or, having read a few pages, toss it aside for something more rivetting? That’s right, they’ll toss it aside. If they can be bothered, the reviews on SmashWords/Amazon will go something like:

“I’m glad this book was free, it was so boring that I couldn’t finish it. Life is too short to read bad books. I won’t be bothering with this author again.”

Yep, that’s what they’ll be saying.

So make me and my friends more interesting. Give us good bits and bad bits. Give us enemies and fears, secret vices and humour. And for goodness sake liven up the story. My ‘illness’ is going to clear up soon but you’ve only written 32k words! Yes, yes, I know you have to make me well enough to do all the things which occur later, but bring in another conflict before you end the health arc. Perhaps my damn ex gets in touch BEFORE the hospital appointment takes place?

Oh, Neil and Geoff are grumbling in a similar manner about their characters. Neil says he’s too good, despite his profession and Geoff says he’s a stereotypical uncaring male. Two extremes. They want some in-betweenness.
Why am I always asleep when the most interesting scenes occur? Okay, we know this isn’t a ‘vampire’ novel like Twilight (thank goodness), and you want a more ‘real world’ in which vampires don’t actually exist, but at least let me and the others ‘play’ vampires on the goth scene.
And when you take me to a goth club I don’t just want to stand around, talking to minor unrememberable characters who don’t appear again, I want SOMETHING TO HAPPEN.
The phone is ringing now, I expect it’s Geoff with something boring to say for another boring scene,

Yours, stereotypically,
Claire. (From Long in the Boredom)"

It's disheartening when even your characters don't like the book!

Dear Claire,
Go make a tres leches cake. Or as Google tried to type a tree leeches cake. Then you won't be bored. Feed it to the other characters.
Love,
A reader wanting a cake.

[BookCat]

Cake baking! Just imagine how she'd moan about that. Now if she slipped some arsenic in it ...

[gmw]

It is a difficult path to tread. Too much "interest" in your characters and they feel false and unrealistic, too little and they're boring.

I find that in many books the main protagonists are often ... if not boring, then at least less interesting that some of the supporting cast. The issue, I believe, is that main protagonists are the vehicle through which the reader experiences the story, and making them too extreme in any regard can easily stretch into making them inaccessible to the reader.

Be very careful of trying to find too much "in-betweenness" in your supporting cast; it is very easy for this to slide into everyone seeming the same.

I read somewhere that all authors only have limited repertoire of detailed characters that they recycle from book to book. It was a long time ago that I read this, but I seem to remember the figure as being something like 7 for most authors. I remember looking around at the books on my shelf and thinking there was considerable truth in it, although there are some authors that manage larger casts. (The Harry Potter books always amazed me with how many characters there were in it, and how even minor characters played important roles right through the books.)

I find it helps to write scenes for your characters that aren't part of the story. Prelude type stuff, or short stories of some happening that may have nothing to do with your main story. Here you can get as carried away - or as mundane - as you like, and you start to get a feel for the characters, how they act and speak, why they are like they are. By deliberately writing such scenes outside the main story you get the freedom to write what you want without worrying about what the reader is going to make of it, and this freedom - I find - helps me to relax and spread my imagination. It can also give you events that you can refer to in the story. Care is needed not to side-track the real story with irrelevancies, but being able to refer to life beyond the immediate story gives everything a bit more depth.

So ... tell Claire to get a life. Go out and get some experience outside the story, and then she can come back and be a better character in the story.

[BookCat]

gmw: I like your idea of writing about the characters just to get to know them, that's partly why I wrote the letter. Some scenes, not intended for the draft might help me know them better.

Unlike the characters in The Haunted, who came to me fully formed, Claire has been problematic as a personality. I've filled out personality questionaires etc in order to get to know her. I think this is because I've never know people of her type, or close to it, to draw upon. Even the incorrigible homeless guys in The Haunted were combinations of people I've known, but changed greatly.

Are you saying that the main protagonists SHOULD be simple in order for the reader to identify with them, or just that many writers use that technique?

I don't think any of my characters could be accused of seeming similar, they even have different speech patterns, except, maybe, for Claire's family, who haven't appeared yet, but will in a later climactic scene. Perhaps, when I write that scene, their voices will emerge.

But you can see why my books remain unfinished. Claire was expressing some of the criticism I level at myself. I always get to a point where my main thought is "this is total rubbish and not worth the bother of finishing".

[gmw]

And not just know them better, but fill out their background in a more personal and memorable way than simple notes and questionnaire responses. These stick with me as I get back to writing actual story scenes. For Dryad I wrote some scenes about my main character growing up, and the relationship with his parents. I still remember the scene I wrote for when his father died. Almost none of this information made it into the novel, beyond the fact that the character had no other family, but it all fed into how I felt about the character and how he responded in some situations and conversations. I also wrote about how he met his wife and how they lived back then. This fed the story more directly, not in the story events but in the background detail - for example how the house was set up when we meet the main character in the story. It gave him a life, a reality to draw on that helped to stop him just reciting his lines.

I don't think main characters have to be simple, they probably shouldn't, but they don't have to be dazzling either. They have to be real enough to interest you, the writer, and when that happens you trust that it will show in how you write them. It is common for main protagonists to be less flamboyant than some other characters. For a start, being too colourful is hard to maintain in a way that doesn't irritate the reader, and perhaps more importantly, giving your main character too much colour can get in the way of revealing the story.

Of course, it varies from story to story. Sometimes the main character's character is the story to a significant extent (eg: Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant). But in many cases the story is what happens to someone relatively ordinary (which isn't necessarily the same as simple), and too much colour would take away the reader's involvement in this process.


I'd also add: don't knock stereotypes. Just as so many stories can be interpreted as just another "Hero's Journey", so many characters can be boiled down to a set of typical human traits. Part of the writer's job is to hide this from the reader. It forms part of what Stephen King calls a writer's ESP: the ability to write a phrase that will trigger a reaction in the reader, without being obvious about it, and one of those reactions is the all-to-human trait of categorising people. We can't afford to describe how wonderfully unique and individual every character is book really is, so we tickle the reader into generalising: bossy old woman, ugly bully, soppy love struck teenager, whatever. Do it well enough and you have a town full of people that the reader has mostly constructed for you, and do it right and each reader's town will look quite a lot like most other reader's towns. King, in his early years in particular, was a master at this.


I completely relate to the "this is rubbish" feeling. I keep a journal, and reading over it can give the impression of some sort of bipolar disorder. It seems that, for me, when the writing is going well I am upbeat and feel good about everything, but when I hit one of many dry spells I get depressed and everything looks like a waste of effort. Generally I try to ignore the periods of depression (I'm not saying it's easy), and hope they'll go away if I keep pushing.

[BookCat]

Fascinating insight into character development, thanks. I suppose stereotypes are a bit like cliches, popular because useful. I think part of me would consider so much background writing: scenes which will never make it to the book, as wasted effort. On the other hand, for the author to have a deep knowledge of the character, which is not necessarily included in the book, adds a roundedness which the reader instinctively picks up.

I often think that my plots are just silly, then try to remind myself of the basic plots of famous novels, Wuthering Heights, for example, which when broken down to their basic levels seem fairly mundane. (Adopted child, given a hard time by older 'brother' falls in love with his adopted sister. After her death, he avenges himself upon the next generation. Ending: their ghosts are seen walking the moors. This is made even sillier by a double framing: story told to us by a man being told the story by a servant who witnessed the events.)

[gmw]

Yes, it can be a lot of work to create scenes whose only end use is an abstract feeling in the actual story, or - if you're lucky - a throw away line in a conversation somewhere. I think it's worth it, but then I write for much the same reason that I read, to immerse myself in another world, so I don't find it difficult or something I begrudge. You mention at the top of this page that you hate writing the first draft - and these external scenes are pretty much all first drafts - so that is going to colour your perspective.

You might also console yourself that you need not necessarily do it for every book. Do it well for a couple of books and you have assembled an entourage that can accompany you on future journeys. Witness Agatha Christie: not only did she get to keep Poirot (and Marple and Battle and so on) going for book after book, but most of her cast of suspects get pretty familiar too - with the names changed to protect the guilty. There are many more examples.


As for feeling that a plot is silly, most fiction can be viewed that way. I suspect it's why some people don't read much fiction: all they can see are the flaws (all fiction has flaws) so they can't let themselves go enough to enjoy the ride. And "the ride", for me, is what fiction (reading and writing) is all about. It's why I'm happy to enjoy kids books, romance, mysteries, sci-fi, fantasy ... pretty much anything, and why I re-read a lot of books; even when I already know the ending, if I enjoy the ride I don't care that there's no surprise. This reminds me of a line from a Harry Chapin song (Greyhound): "It's got to be the going, not the getting there, that's good."

Speaking of Harry Chapin, he also wrote a song called Mr Tanner. I sometimes think of this song when it comes to trying to publish. The song tells of a cleaner who sang while cleaning clothes, and his friends convince him to give a concert, which eventually leads to the lines:

But the concert was a blur to him, spatters of applause
He did not know how well he sang, he only heard the flaws

For all the enjoyment I find in writing, there is a certain amount of loss when it comes to making it ready for the public and you are forced to see the flaws. It's one reason I'm happy not to publish everything that I write.


(In case you can't tell, I'm supposed to be working - computer stuff - but I'm not in the mood. So getting carried away here seems like a much better use of my time. )

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by BookCat

gmw: I like your idea of writing about the characters just to get to know them, that's partly why I wrote the letter. Some scenes, not intended for the draft might help me know them better.

Unlike the characters in The Haunted, who came to me fully formed, Claire has been problematic as a personality. I've filled out personality questionaires etc in order to get to know her. I think this is because I've never know people of her type, or close to it, to draw upon. Even the incorrigible homeless guys in The Haunted were combinations of people I've known, but changed greatly.

Are you saying that the main protagonists SHOULD be simple in order for the reader to identify with them, or just that many writers use that technique?

I don't think any of my characters could be accused of seeming similar, they even have different speech patterns, except, maybe, for Claire's family, who haven't appeared yet, but will in a later climactic scene. Perhaps, when I write that scene, their voices will emerge.

But you can see why my books remain unfinished. Claire was expressing some of the criticism I level at myself. I always get to a point where my main thought is "this is total rubbish and not worth the bother of finishing".

^ That last paragraph.

How many words is that letter? 200? 300?

That time spent could have been used to actually WRITE more of your novel.

It's nano! You only have (what? one month?) to write it. DO IT! DO IT!

Then, when you finish and the personal satisfaction of actually having completed the project is over, THEN go back and write notes and letters to whomever you wish - your character, your butcher, your mechanic, your doctor, your husband/wife, etc.

After that, you can go back and revise your work - adding, subtracting, trashing - to your heart's content.

AND THEN put it on the market.

When the circle is complete, start a new circle and write another novel.

[BookCat]

Dr Drib: I just copied and pasted the letter into Word to do a word count: 500 words. I/Claire wrote this letter some time ago while working on the book - it's in the Scrivener folder.

But yes, I'm procrastinating in the days running up to November 1st, the official nano start date. I've already read (on my Kindle, in txt format) what I have of the first draft: too much repetition, scenes in the wrong order for the plot flow ... lots of stuff to get my teeth into during editing which is the part I most enjoy.

gmw: Thank you so much for all your help and interesting advice. I'll probably post at the end of nano and tell you how it went; maybe at times along the way too.

[gmw]

As you can tell I'm very happy to share - at great length - the results of my introspection (and given your letter from Claire, I know you understand about introspection). It seems that I'm so happy to talk about writing that I am starting to repeat myself in places. I don't now whether to put this down to encroaching senility or a writer's propensity to keep reworking things until they start to sound right. The latter sounds better, so let's go with that.

Not long to nano now. Good luck with it.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by BookCat

Cake baking! Just imagine how she'd moan about that. Now if she slipped some arsenic in it ...

Or some Mary Jane.