What are you writing about now?

Based on the video, I just made a document listing each chapter. Now, a scene and a chapter are not the same, but I often start a new scene at the start of a chapter. If a chapter has more than one scene, I'll add more scene lines (and probably a scene title for scenes in that chapter). My starting format looks like the attached document. My goal is to fill it in for each scene over the next week or so.

Why?

Well, it's a handy record of what's where, in case I need it later when working on later books in the series.

But most importantly, if I don't know what needs to go in one of those blanks, it's probably because the scene needs more work. I think this will be the most efficient way of figuring that out and tracking whether I fixed it. If I discover a blank text box should be empty (i.e., there is no twist in the scene), then I can grey it out. Otherwise, it's missing info I need to add to the scene.

Hope you find this useful. I think it will help me tell any kind of story well. I'll be curious about whether you find it useful also.

On the topic of writing and inspiration for it, here's a funny story from this very day!

An unnamed loved one had to get a colonoscopy today. The procedure is not unpleasant (though the lead-up to it is a rather excremental experience).
I was the designated driver/monitor for afterwards (because they are doped up before the procedure and can't drive and shouldn't be left alone).

Well, I've got a FIRST DRAFT to edit, so I'm editing away in the waiting room. I'm called into the patient after-care waiting area when the procedure is completed. My loved one is loopy and sleepy from the anaesthetic and lying on their side on the gurney, facing away from me.

Now, some of you may not know this, but the intestines get filled with air during this procedure, and well, that air has to be expelled by the body. That happens through a series of, in the colloquial vernacular, massive farts. One was foisted onto the world (and me) just as I sat down behind them.
My comment was as follows: "Wow, thanks! I was editing a scene where the main character and associates are in a basement flooded with fetid water with plenty of slime on the stairs and walls. This will really help with the scentual description* of the scene!"

*Pun intended.

Here are a few excerpts from the ProWritingAid Virtual Beta Reader manuscript critique on Volume I, A Tale of Two Tales

"Thoughts on Writing Style
Voice and Tone: The narrative voice is wonderfuly varied and effective. Faedirion's sections are written in a haunted, embittered tone that feels like a confession, making me feel like his confidant in grief. In contrast, Carnimirie's diary entries are earnest, heartfelt, and sometimes painfully naive, which created a strong sense of intimacy and empathy. The shift between these distinct voices made the world feel rich and multifaceted."

Now, I have to tell you, this particular comment made me ecstatically happy. Why? Because Faedirion's sections ARE being told to a confidant (who is actually the one supplying the story to us). They are being told as a recruiting pitch to get that confidant to become an agent working with Faedirion. It's a carefully edited tale by Faedirion that, while 100% true, is expressly designed to win over his confidant. (It does.)

Carnimirie's diary was intended to show those exact qualities about her in exactly that way.

The entire structure of the book requires different characters to relate their experiences. If the characters all sound like the same person, the book will fail utterly.

"How I Felt about the Characters
Most Liked: I liked Carnimirie the most. Her resilience is astonishing; despite losing (a long list I'll not quote), she consistently chooses kindness, healing, and duty. Her journey from a seemingly naive maiden to a wise, capable leader in the shadow war is inspiring." (I.e., cold war of spies and counterspies)

"Most Interesting: I found Faedirion the most intriguing character. He is a perfectly crafted tragic anti-hero whose initial grief is so relatable that it makes his slow descent into darkness all the more horrifying. Watching his quest for justice curdle into a cold, manipulative vengeance that mirrors the very evil he despises was absolutely fascinating."

These two comments also made me wonderfully happy. It understood exactly what I was intending to write.

There were, of course, comments that mentioned suggestions for improvement, including some that mentioned a serious need for improvement. There were a few where the AI either got confused or I've got to really clarify some points.

I ended up with twenty action items that I wanted to explore in addition to the fifteen I had identified prior to running the report. I'm already down to 28 from 35 in less than a day.

I'll make all the changes I intend to make based on this (and polish the sections of prose I alter) and re-run the Virtual Beta Reader. Then I'll work through any new issues and polish the rest of the prose. Re-run the Virtual Beta Reader, fix any issues, and go find some human Beta Readers.

In addition, AutoCrit just came out with Virtual Alpha and Beta Readers last week. I'll be using them in this process as well.

Ent said:

"That" is the simple part of editing, and sets the stage for the tough stuff.

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And I am so grateful you taught me - dare I say it - that!

david_wendelken said:

And I am so grateful you taught me - dare I say it - that!

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I can die a happy Ent, knowing there are at least some few people around, who are more aware of some of the insidious encumbrances, fillers, and weakeners in our word delivery than they were before.

Just keep in mind, I also encourage eliminating them from our verbal expression. This is much more difficult - but is a great help in revising our thinking about words on ALL fronts, so we easily and naturally find them vanishing from our written realms as well.

Little good it does for us to attend to it when the proverbial pen is flowing, if we do not also improve our vocal, text, and email delivery of our thoughts.

It is not a 'one arena' thing. It is a lifestyle.

The manuscript analysis mentioned two scenes where some extraordinary magic occurred. It pointed out that I had given no foreshadowing of those abilities. Thus, those events appeared to qualify for the dreaded deus ex machina label. Gulp. It had a point.

One was just an oversight on my part and easily remedied. I had to decide earlier in the text where and how to demonstrate it.

The other? Well, it's a surprise to everyone and appears inexplicable. There is a perfectly logical explanation, but I won't reveal it until Volume 2 is released. I put on my thinking cap and figured out how to foreshadow it with a false cover, i.e., a logical but incorrect deduction made by someone close to the character. And that will make it easy-peasy!

Deus Ex Machina is a dreaded trope for any good writer. I'm glad the analysis caught it! Shows how valuable editors can be for us :]

WatcherWraith said:

Deus Ex Machina is a dreaded trope for any good writer. I'm glad the analysis caught it! Shows how valuable editors can be for us :]

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Me too! Neither were really Deus ex machina, but since the full back story hadn't been revealed, it was reasonable to think so.

I'm down to 24 issues to address. I'm really pleased with the changes I've made so far.

I talked over the rest of the intended changes with my alpha reader. She felt the issues the analysis documents raised were almost always reasonable, and likes my intended fixes. Yeah!

Now I have go draw something with a skeleton in it for art class.

14 issues to go!

4 issues to go!

1. One chapter had a lot of moving about by various parties. Had to make sure it was correctly synchronised. Couldn't do that AND write vivid descriptive prose in the same pass. So, the task is to make the prose more vivid.
2. A young man is travelling the back roads with a lovely bard for the better part of a year. She is moulding him to have the skills he will need to survive where he is going. To both entertain and instruct him, she makes good use of her storytelling skills. He admires her and loves her (like a mother). He is the narrator of this series of chapters. I realised his vocabulary and phrasing should alter a bit over the course of the journey, becoming more poetic as time goes by.
3. Need to make it clearer the bad guy uses Sauron's help but isn't motivated or run by Sauron or his minions.
4. Have to decide whether to add a bit more backstory to cover the bad guy's activities in the 2nd age. The story is a 1st age and 3rd age one. I'm leaning against it, particularly if I handle #3 correctly.
   

Well! I dusted off the ideas dancing around in my head for a long while, and I recently started an introductory chapter to the work I have had in mind for a long time now. It is a fanfic idea I've mentioned for funsies awhile back, so I have no clue who actually remembers it, lol. But if those who are in that chat go back to the convo and search for it, they'll know where the story is headed.

But I will summarize it like this as of now: The main character, who has the Flame Imperishable*, is sent into Middle-Earth from another world, which was originally going to be our world, but my muse broke in and started worldbuilding my own lore not even related to anything in M-E. 🤣 She comes from a world where the Guild of Image-Bearers thrives. The Creator trains the Image-Bearers for seven years before sending them into another world for an unknown mission. And our main character is obviously being sent to M-E, as aforementioned, and will be appearing during the time of the War of the Ring. And I will pause there as of now. If you'd like to hear the outline as I've mentioned it in the past, message me.


*Flame Imperishable = Holy Spirit

There are many, many, MANY benefits to writing non-linearly. The main downside I've found is in making continuity a bit harder. I caught a continuity mistake late last night. Now, since I came up with the bad guy's back story last spring, I've been working on the proper way to integrate it into the book. What order to I tell it in, who tells which part, and much harder, how to interleave it in with the heroine's story that starts about 5000 years later. It took hard thinking, hard work, and a good bit of shuffling things around a bit before I felt happy with the result.

Last night I was making a modification to a chapter when I realized I had killed off 5 of the characters in it in an earlier chapter. This was definitely a continuity problem as there aren't any dead folks walking around in that chapter! (I will neither confirm nor deny the presence of dead people walking around in other chapters.) Thankfully, it didn't really matter which order the two chapters were in. So, all I had to do was flip the order and change a few dates. Whew!

It did prompt me to add a very small chapter after both of them, which I expect will be a happy addition to the story.

Glorfindel Goldtress said:

Well! I dusted off the ideas dancing around in my head for a long while, and I recently started an introductory chapter to the work I have had in mind for a long time now. It is a fanfic idea I've mentioned for funsies awhile back, so I have no clue who actually remembers it, lol. But if those who are in that chat go back to the convo and search for it, they'll know where the story is headed.

But I will summarize it like this as of now: The main character, who has the Flame Imperishable*, is sent into Middle-Earth from another world, which was originally going to be our world, but my muse broke in and started worldbuilding my own lore not even related to anything in M-E. 🤣 She comes from a world where the Guild of Image-Bearers thrives. The Creator trains the Image-Bearers for seven years before sending them into another world for an unknown mission. And our main character is obviously being sent to M-E, as aforementioned, and will be appearing during the time of the War of the Ring. And I will pause there as of now. If you'd like to hear the outline as I've mentioned it in the past, message me.


*Flame Imperishable = Holy Spirit

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That's a fascinating idea. And a scary one. Doesn't that allow them to give life to things?

Here are some reports I just ran on Volume 1, prior to doing editing other than removing excess "that" usages and the adverbs I mentioned in my last post.

I wish I had taken screen shots of what these reports looked like when I started editing my last book. The numbers were HORRENDOUS.

I had 1583 usages of the word "that". One out of every hundred words was "that".
The different variations on the word "looked" had hundreds of entries.

Not how fast the "big bad numbers" on word usages drop down.

It's proof that the tools have helped me learn to avoid a host of bad writing habits.

The overall numbers at the top of the reports compare fantasy book numbers (in general) vs my own book's numbers. It means that, for the most part, I'm well within reader expectations regarding industry standards in the genre.

I just like to write for fun; at the moment I am writing about two NYC detectives named Malone and Spaghetti who are more interested in tasty food then solving their cases but do solve cases and manage never to get fired no matter what mischief they might be up to. I actually have been working on it for quite a while and have written quite a bit because I don't seem to run out of case ideas or ways to make it funny, so that is basically what I am writing.

Beleg_Cúthalion said:

I just like to write for fun; at the moment I am writing about two NYC detectives named Malone and Spaghetti who are more interested in tasty food then solving their cases but do solve cases and manage never to get fired no matter what mischief they might be up to. I actually have been working on it for quite a while and have written quite a bit because I don't seem to run out of case ideas or ways to make it funny, so that is basically what I am writing.

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Sounds like a fun read!

Back when Volumes 1 thru 3 were one book, I had 3 different plot lines fighting for the top dog position. I wrote chapters for the little dogs in a minimalist style, such as letters and such, to convey the info without taking up as much space.

I grew unhappy with the overall results and split it into the current 3 volumes. Last night, in about an hour, I took one of those letters and rewrote it as a story instead. It's way better, much more immediate in nature. Woot!

Down to 3 issues to correct in addition to the overall polishing and editing.

I've gotten a chance to have a professional editor take a look at a scene from my work. It's for a critique in an online writer's group.

I'm picking the inciting incident for Volume One. So, I took it to my in-person writer's group and asked them to read and make comments. They're a great group of folks and made some really useful, actionable comments. I stayed up late last night addressing most of their suggestions, and the piece is harder hitting. Still have a couple of their ideas to work through, then I'll send it on to her.
Started at 1656 words, now I'm at 1585. More descriptive, less wordy, easier to read.

I'll let you know how it goes a week from saturday.

That's really valuable. I admit, having someone tell me all the things wrong with my work is something I'm still trying go be okay with, myself. I know they're right, and I know full well I need to critique. But I still have some amount of pride to struggle against :']

WatcherWraith said:

That's really valuable. I admit, having someone tell me all the things wrong with my work is something I'm still trying go be okay with, myself. I know they're right, and I know full well I need to critique. But I still have some amount of pride to struggle against :

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Reframe it like this: What they are telling you is what they like and what would help them like it even more. If a writer's group member can give you specifics (as opposed to "I like it") about what they like and don't like, it means your work gripped them enough to PAY ATTENTION to it. It's incredibly easy to just zone out of a piece of writing that doesn't engage you.

I had a sentence describing what was happening after the Noldor sacked Alqualonde and were disposing of the corpses on board the ships they were stealing.

"They threw the dead off like sacks of turnips."

Maybe you've never had to toss 50lb bags of produce around, but they land with a very appropriate, bounceless thud. The comment was it that it pulled them out of the scene. Probably because they don't know what a sack of turnips thuds like.

It now reads:

"The dead crew were being tossed overboard. Their limp bodies thudded onto the dock or plunged into the harbour — some disappearing with a single splash, others rising again to bob in the harbour’s waves, spreading darkening threads of blood about them."

I think it's an improvement. (Opinions may differ. )