Outline Prologue
I thought since some of you have read my Prologue, it might be fun for you to see its inception paragraph in the book's outline.
When I was ready to start writing the book, I took the above paragraph, pasted it into its own new .doc file, and started writing it. Those who are astute will see not everything lines up exactly in the Prologue. It's not raining—the reader never knows what it is doing outside. I took the part about scattering homeless and worked that in with how people perceive Richard in general, as well as at the end with Walker and that man's worry at what he's just witnessed Richard do. Fairies do get through, but another creature does not.
The differences come about for several reasons that I can think of. One, I wrote that paragraph a while ago and since that time I've thought more about what I want to do with that chapter. And two, when I'm writing, it is an organic thing and those important aspects I want in the chapter blossom in their own unique ways. I don't always have control over that.
That paragraph is how most of my outline chapters look—just a few sentences describing the setting, what's going on, and what happens by its end. Some chapter paragraphs are longer than others, but they are all the same in how they help me operate and keep things straight.
I thought I'd share. This is quite an intimate look at my work, and I hope it sheds some light on a part of my writing process.
| Prologue: It is Pioneer Square in Seattle at night. Raining. Fall. Creature comes through. Richard defeats it, but not before several homeless are ravaged. He stares into the gloom of the Underground Tour cavern, probing the darkness for something else that never comes. All of the homeless scatter before him—they fear him. Knows fairies and some kind of smaller fey thing have gotten through and knows they are the scouts searching for something near. |
When I was ready to start writing the book, I took the above paragraph, pasted it into its own new .doc file, and started writing it. Those who are astute will see not everything lines up exactly in the Prologue. It's not raining—the reader never knows what it is doing outside. I took the part about scattering homeless and worked that in with how people perceive Richard in general, as well as at the end with Walker and that man's worry at what he's just witnessed Richard do. Fairies do get through, but another creature does not.
The differences come about for several reasons that I can think of. One, I wrote that paragraph a while ago and since that time I've thought more about what I want to do with that chapter. And two, when I'm writing, it is an organic thing and those important aspects I want in the chapter blossom in their own unique ways. I don't always have control over that.
That paragraph is how most of my outline chapters look—just a few sentences describing the setting, what's going on, and what happens by its end. Some chapter paragraphs are longer than others, but they are all the same in how they help me operate and keep things straight.
I thought I'd share. This is quite an intimate look at my work, and I hope it sheds some light on a part of my writing process.
Labels: Craft, The Dagda King
posted by Shawn C. Speakman | 8:31 PM
13 Comments:
Very insightful. Looks like a good system. Thanks for sharing!
IncubusJax: It works for me. Might not work for you. But that's the brilliance of the craft -- finding what works and continually improving one's writing.
Haha, I love it. Primarily, how vague it is--I don't mean that negatively in any way whatsoever. Its great that you're willing to share your process with us, too many authors (in my opinion) hide behind the same old "its all chicken scratch and wouldn't make sense to anyone but me" mantra--or some derivative of that same line of thought. Quite honestly, thats a touch hard to swallow, even tho I'm sure theres a grain of truth to it. But the fact of the matter is we want a glimpse of the process even if its all gibberish to us. (And in a lot of instances we can make use of it, or at least some of us can.)
A peice of advice I would give to anyone starting out would be to title your chapters. I didn't do this on my first book or on what i've wrote in my second book, but in editing i'm inacting it retroactively. I'm not saying all books should have titled chapters, if ever mine is published it will definitely not feature them. But for the sake of editing and giving direction/focus to your internal writing process it can be invaluable. [Plus if you take a lengthy break b/w edits or need to reference something to make sure ends are meeting, its much easier to say, "Yes, so and so died in chapter 22--'Dominoe topples all his friends'" than trying to recall which unnamed chapter it has the occurance.]
Food for thought.
a quick add on here, if you are the type of author that does name your chapters, thats great. But make sure that we don't read your chapter name and deduce whats going to happen. Nothing worse than someone dangling that carrot a little too close and ruining all the suspense.
Sean: Yeah, it is pretty vague. Some of the later chapters have thicker prose in the outline, some of which have bits of dialogue and stronger scene development. But most of them are vague, and once I get into the actual outlining of the individual chapter, I then let that vague paragraph expand on its own, naturally, as I write.
This is why I advocate outlining. The people who cringe from it and say it takes away from creativity have probably never done it. As you can see from my example here, there was a lot for me to come up with as I wrote. The process isn't rigid to me. It's just like if I started from scratch -- with the difference being I know for sure I can navigate my way to the end of the book without getting writers block (something I associate with poor planning prior to beginning a new book).
Naming chapters with titles can be very useful. I don't like doing it -- it's just not my thing -- but naming chapters forces the writer to think, "Does this chapter move the story forward?" And to me that's the most important aspect of novel writing... having the story continue to follow a course toward the climax. Many writers have a hard time with this; they move the story along too slowly or they speed it up too fast. By titling chapters, it makes the writer pause and address, "What is this chapter really about?" It can be a good tool.
Shawn - couldn't agree more.
If you wouldn't mind sharing, what is your one sentance tagline for the Dagda...okay i gotta go back to stressing out about my Packers beating your sea-chickens, (We are down 14-7 right now in the first quarter)
Sean: Don't stress. As soon as it started snowing, the Packers were going to win. Seattle's offense and most importantly its defense is speed oriented, and the snow nullified that. The Packers were a better team in that weather, but I truly think the Seahawks would have won without that weather.
Now, on to the tagline. I haven't thought of one, to be honest. Or more appropriately, I haven't settled on one. I have two. I'll give you the one I like:
"What if the church's first Crusades weren't against the Middle East, but instead against real Celtic gods and goddesses of the British Isles -- and those Crusades failed."
As with all initial taglines, this one needs help. There isn't enough conflict in it and I need to work in aspects of the current story. But, it is a beginning and I will work more on it as I finish the book.
Hey Shawn, was poking around having some fun this morning and i decided to throw you into one of my favorite, unimportant little games. Cut and paste a published author--but you'll work in this case--into a blank word document and spelling gram check, and behold the power of (I shall now butcher this) kincaid-flesch readability score. I was well pleased that you scored abysmally low, even lower than what my writing does, and even lower than does your average Terry Brooks excerpt, leading me to believe you must be the best writer of us all, ahahaa, in other words it doesn't matter what it says. But, if you want an interesting topic to expand upon tell me what you think about this? You did have a very low passive sentence count, which i hear is good--how much do you worry about the passive voice, you had considerably higher in Song of Fell Hammer (it was plugged into this game back inthe day) which at the time made me feel good, b/c it was about on par with the passive voice usage in my own writing. Did anyone say this is a problem on ur previous book? Or is it all happenstance from my pitifullly small test sample selection?
If it interests you then please ramble on and on, if you're too busy than one sentence will suffice. and by the way, thank you for such a thorough and well thought out answer the other day on the subject of changing the title of a book. it is beyond me how they would think you are creative and talented enough to write books for a living, edition after edition, and pay you for it, and yet decide that they can come up with a better title, lol, but we already went over that.
Sean: I'll talk about anything, especially right now; I just got back from having my wisdom tooth pulled -- the culprit for my terrible health this 2008 -- and I have nothing to do but sit and relax, wait for the novocaine to wear off, and get ready to take the vicodin. Joy.
The first three chapters of Fell Hammer were my learning chapters, even beyond what I learned throughout the entire book. Those chapters have a lot of passive in them because when I wrote them I didn't know what passive and active voice really was. I just wrote what sounded right to my ear.
After my editor ripped those chapters apart nine or ten times, I slowly discovered how my writing could be improved and one of those areas was passive voice.
I wrote Fell Hammer and slowly improved my use of passive voice, only using it when there was no other way to say something. Once I began writing The Dagda King, I knew passive voice was going to be used sparingly. There are simply stronger ways of writing sentences.
In short, it has been a conscious decision to use it in small doses. And it happened that way because I wrote 230,000 words and could get a better grasp of when to use it.
On a side note, Terry wrote me this morning. Having read my Prologue, he said, "I finally got around to reading your prologue last night. Pretty exciting. It made me want to read on and know more, so I guess that's what matters. I can't tell you much more without putting the prologue in context with the rest of the book. Just keep going. I think you are on to something."
Those are kind words that drive me forward. And I'll get back to the story once this wisdom tooth pain is gone and I can focus.
Glad you identified the cause of your pain and sickness, sounds like you need to partake in some web-druid sleep to recover....just remember, Shawn, there is always a price to pay for the druid sleep.
I just finished reading your prologue. It is really very good. :D You went into good detail and kept it interesting. You really are a great author.
Ellie ; )
Sean: Yeah, the price I've paid for my Druid Sleep has been not writing... Thankfully, that changed yesterday.
Ellie: Awe, thanks! Glad you read it and enjoyed it. I'm not a great author -- I will never be great at this, I'm just not James Joycian enough for it -- but I will be great at focused writing and delivering my ideas on time. That I can promise.
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