Announcing My Novel for NaNoWriMo 2016

So there's this novel that I've been blogging about writing since literally June 2013 - over three freaking years ago. In fact, as of right now, I have blogged about it exactly 16 times, including for the first time I participated in NaNoWriMo.

Pictured: too many rewrites.

Yet, in all of those posts, I only mention the title three times (most recently in January 2014), and that's not even the title I've been working with for the past couple years. Additionally, if you searched through all of my blog posts talking about the novel, or even read its synopsis in my 2013 NaNoWriMo, you'd have trouble articulating exactly what it's about. Sure, I revealed a few details here and there, but those were back before the massive amount of rewrites I did. Even then, all the details I had released online amounted to nothing more than "some college girl sleeps with a married man and then something complicated happens."

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted about that novel, and as a result, I'm willing to reveal its title and synopsis.

Here's exactly what happened:

The Long, Painful Journey of Realizing I'm Doing It Wrong

Sometime early this year, after three years of planning, writing, and rewriting, I finished the first draft of that novel. Just a month later, I took to rewriting it almost completely from scratch, but as the year wore on I began to lose faith in the story as a whole, going so far as to almost completely throw it out and move on to some other project.

I admit now that I was going about the rewrite all wrong by starting from scratch without even going back to look at the first draft; I was so hard on myself for what I perceived as the shortcomings that they clouded my vision and I failed to see any of the genuinely good-quality writing that was hidden within the original draft. I was so clouded, in fact, that I was determined to remove what I would later realize were key, quality, entertaining scenes.

As should be expected, it was someone else who set me straight.

I was having lunch one day with my talented poet friend, Kathrine Yets, whose delightful works have been featured in the likes of Straylight, Woodland Pattern Book Center, River & South Review, and Blue Heron Review, when we inevitably got around to talking about my novel. You see, Kathrine and I have been friends since college, where we bonded in large part due to our mutual interest in raw, unfiltered, honest writing. Because of this and the fact that we're always genuinely eager and interested in each other's work, Kathrine has been my go-to person whenever I need advice, critique, or someone to brag to about an accomplishment or new idea in my writing. While she doesn't know absolutely everything about my novel, she's read the original short story, seen the first outline, and read and helped me to shape large portions of the first draft (and I can't thank her enough for all of that).

So we were sitting there, eating our overstuffed pita pockets while talking about my novel. I told her that I was incredibly dissatisfied with how the second draft was going, that I hated the first draft, and that I wanted to change this character and that scene.

"You're getting rid of that?" she asked, eyes wide with disbelief. "I loved that part!"

I was immediately caught off-guard. The only person I'd been consulting on the quality of my own writing for several months had been myself, and I was not a fan. However, hearing someone else be honestly upset at my artistic decision was only the beginning of her slapping some sense into me, because shortly afterwards she dropped this wisdom bomb on me:

"Never listen to your inner critic; that’s what other people are for."

-Kathrine Yets

This phrase stuck with me more than similar sentiments from dozens of other people had, because not only was it the solid advice I'd heard before but never really believed ("you're too hard on yourself") but because that part was immediately accompanied by the comforting notion that this is not solely my burden to bear. The immediate sensation upon hearing these words (after a moment of dumbfounded silence) was that of the cliché elephant being lifted off my shoulders.

Shortly after this meeting, I was able to look back at my first draft (a feat in and of itself) in a whole new light, unburdened by my inner critic. I was able to see the moments of real quality writing, and more importantly I was able to shrug off the muddy bits that had been obscuring my vision for almost an entire year.

As November approached, I realized what I had to do:

NaNoWriMo 2016

working cover designed by myself for NaNoWriMo

This year for National Novel Writing Month, I am pleased to announce that I will be completing the second draft of my novel, titled Nothing But The Boots.

Nothing But The Boots follows Mandy, a neurotic college girl in a casual sexual relationship with a married man, as she begins to fall in love with his wife.

The book is a continuation of a short story I wrote in college, titled "The Other Woman," which featured Mandy narrating from a closet, where she was forced to hide completely naked to avoid being discovered by her boyfriend's wife. In the novelization, free-spirited, boot-loving Mandy pursues her romantic interest in the wife of the man she's sleeping with, completely unabated by the social stigma and traditional rules of relationships. In doing so, she deals with the repercussions of going against the grain as she fights for what she believes is her right as a human; to pursue true happiness in whatever form it takes.

To prepare for this year's massive 50,000 word challenge, I've uploaded the original draft to my e-reader and have been steadily reading through it during my lunch breaks to find what worked and use that as a foundation.

Aside from the 50,000 words in a month thing, the goal is to develop a coherent second draft worthy of sending to agents and publishers.

Wish me luck!
-Ryan

Tips for Revising the Second Draft of a Novel

Last year, I completed rough drafts of two separate novels, each of which I wrote in very different ways. One was loosely outlined, and then that outline was almost completely ignored in favor of making it up as I went along over the course of a few years. The other was extensively planned, outlined, and then written entirely in the span of a single month with only minor deviations from the original outline.

These are the first full-length novel drafts I've ever completed, hence the drastically different approaches to writing as I'm still kind of figuring out what works best for me. While it was incredibly relieving to finally finish not just one but two full-length drafts after so many years of work, this year I'm tasked with the equally difficult task known as the rewrite. As I've never done a full rewrite before (I refuse to count the time I did massive rewrites to the first story's first draft mid-way through writing it, or the fact that the second story is actually a rewrite in itself), I've found myself in personally uncharted territory yet again. Luckily, I feel like I'm already finding my groove, so here are a few tips for the revision process based on my own experiences thus far:

Tips for Writing Your Second Draft

Rule #1: Nothing is Sacred

The first and most important rule to any rewrite is thus; nothing is sacred. You've got to be prepared for constructive criticism to do away with your favorite scenes, characters, and plot lines if you want to write the best story possible. It doesn't matter if the subject in question is personally important to you unless you can make it just as important to the story and your readers, because in the end a fiction writer isn't some prestigious person to whom all else must obey, a writer is a servant to both the story and the readers.

More important to this rule is that you must understand exactly what is at the core of your story, because if anything is to be considered sacred, it must be that core idea which inspired your story in the first place. Understanding what that core idea is will be infinitely helpful if you hit a wall and become convinced that everything you've written is rubbish. It's in moments like these that you must be willing to toss away all the rubbish and go back to and rebuild an entirely new story from that core. This core can be anything from a setting or character that initially inspired you to write a story around it, or it might be an emotion or message that you want to convey to the reader.

It's Never Too Late to Outline

After finishing the draft of my heavily-outlined novel and then ignoring it for two months, I came back to what appeared to be a horrible mess of a story written by a madman with no sense of pacing, excitement, or tone. Seeing as that draft was the result of me having already discovered the core of an earlier unfinished story and crafting an entirely new plot around it, I was confident that the general outline of my story wasn't the problem, it was the supporting details. The problem was that I couldn't put my finger on exactly what the story was missing.

This is where I turned back to outlines. For days, I did nothing but research plot structures for books, plays, and movies. I refreshed my memory on Freytag's Pyramid and the Three Act Structure, then discovered the Five Act Structure and the Eight Sequences of Film. Having found the Eight Sequences the most personally helpful structure, I poured over definitions for terms like "Inciting Incident" and "First Culmination," then, to the best of my ability, I wrote out what each of the eight sequences were of that first draft. Trying to fit my novel into this structure forced me to not only see that my story wasn't as bad as I feared it was, but helped me understand my own story so much better, which in turn allowed me to see what it was missing. Suddenly, I had a clear understanding for what my main subplot was, why it felt so natural to resolve it when I had, and how to make it even stronger in the next draft.

I'm a firm believer that, while we may have a feel for how to pace a story as we're writing it, it is incredibly helpful to break it down mathematically to understand why exactly it feels good to write it that way. For example, look at the the very middle of your story and see how it relates to the ending. According to traditional structure, if your story ends on a high note there should also be a high note in at the midpoint. If the tone of your middle is a teaser for the ending, you've now got insight into why it works, and if your middle differs from your ending, then maybe that's what's been bothering you the whole time! If traditional structures don't work for your novel, it's still helpful to break down your story to its basics to understand how it moves and what isn't working.

Just Write!

Even after all the brainstorming and outlining, some of my best ideas for revisions came when I actually sat down and started rewriting. I looked at my first paragraph, hated it, tried to think of something more catchy that better prepares the reader for the type of story they're getting into, and came up with an idea that killed two birds with one stone; not only did the new idea check off all the boxes for a great introduction to the story and characters, but out of it came a new subplot that fits perfectly into the story, will help me to tie up many loose threads, and drastically improve the pacing of the exposition.

So when all else fails, just write. Try new things. If you get stuck, take the scene or character that you hate, figure out why you hate it, draw inspiration from popular scenes and characters that you love, figure out why they're awesome, and see if you can apply the essence of that same greatness to yours. Get those creative juices flowing and let them do the heavy lifting.

Listen to the Professionals

Listen, I'm no authority on this sort of thing. Not yet, anyway. But these are the things that work for me, and hopefully I've written something here that will work for you. Otherwise go ahead and research more credible writers, I promise I won't mind.

Oh, and try not to get too stressed about all of it.

-Ryan

From 2015 into 2016

Firstly, concerning my 2015 resolution

So there's this novel I've been working on since my last semester of college when a bunch of girls in my writing workshop class told me that they loved one of my short stories and wanted more. At the end of last year, I made the resolution to finally finish the first draft of that novel in 2015.

Today is the last day of 2015, and while I did finish the first draft of a novel this year (for the first time), it was for a completely unrelated story that I started and finished during the month of November for NaNoWriMo.

While I admit it's a huge bummer to not have a draft done of that college story yet, I'm proud of what I have accomplished in writing this year. I've written a 50,000 word novel from beginning to end, gotten a freelance job writing for a video game that I truly believe in, and am so incredibly close to finishing that college story that I can taste it!

And now, everything else 2015

This year, I've also been making more friends of coworkers than I thought I would, purchased a house along with my lovely wife, adopted the most adorable and fun dog on the planet, and continued to try eating more vegetables.

As far as my hobbies go, I've read several books (The Girl on the Train, Orange is the New Black, The Black Echo, The Girl with All The Gifts, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Survivor, etc.), seen countless movies (Mad Max, Star Wars, Ex Machina, Nightcrawler, Inside Out, Brooklyn, It Follows, Whiplash, The Guest, John Wick, and so many more), listened to a hell of a lot of music (Halsey, Grimes, The Weeknd, Panic! At The Disco, Melody Gardot, Purity Ring, Nero, and holy crap so much more), but played mostly one video game (Xcom: Enemy Unknown).

So, what about next year?

More. More of everything. More novel drafts, more freelance opportunities, more fun at work, more projects on the house, more playtime with my dog, more books to read, more movies to watch, more music to thrive on, more Xcom (the sequel comes out soon), and - of course - much more time with my amazing, caring, fun, can't-survive-without-her wife!

Maybe not as many more vegetables, though. We're starting to get down to the really weird ones.

Oh yeah, and a million times more Tactical Laser Tag. It has seriously been too long since I did that.

-Ryan

NaNoWriMo 2015 - A Recap

You see that up there? That's the tentative cover for the first novel I've ever finished writing. Somehow, I did it. Somehow, I wrote over 50,000 words in thirty days. Somehow, I won NaNoWriMo 2015.

How difficult was it?

It's weird to think about, because on one hand, the entire process was incredibly hard for me, especially when I would have a moment (and there were many) where I knew in the marrow of my bones that the novel wasn't good enough, and that everything I had written so far just wasn't living up to my expectations. On the other hand, though, the entire month's worth of writing seemed to fly by at the speed of light; I'd be writing one day, then look back in the novel to clarify some previously-established information only to be amazed at how far back I had to go to find it because I'd written so much!

Again, I owe it all to my hour-long lunch break at work, the uncomfortable cold weather which encouraged me to stay inside and write rather than going out for some fresh air, and most importantly my own discipline. You can see on the official word count charts below that I kept a pretty steady pace to stay on target every day while always compensating for a missed goal due to a busy weekend.

Is it any good?

The easy question to be asked when telling people that I've finished writing a novel in thirty days is, "is the novel good?" but I stand firm in my answer that whether or not the novel is good isn't the point, the point is that I worked hard at something I love to do. By writing an average of 1,697 words per day, I was practicing and (hopefully) slowly improving at my beloved craft. Creative writing isn't something you just can or cannot do, like any other skill it takes practice and determination to improve. That all being true, I consider myself to be my harshest critic, and let's just say that there will be revisions.

What now?

So where do I go from here? Well, I've still got to finish my years-in-the-making novel about a college-aged girl who winds up in a scandalous romance. It was my last new years' resolution to finish my first draft of that novel by the end of 2015, so I suppose I'll take this discipline I've developed and point it in that direction while I let The Dream House sit in the back of my mind for a month until I'm ready to re-open it and get to the revisions.

For those interested, you can read the current synopsis for The Dream House and even take a peek at a small synopsis here, just bear in mind this is a rough first draft.
-Ryan

Check out these related blog posts:
My First NaNoWriMo - 2013
My NaNoWriMo 2014 Recap
Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2015
Final Preparations for NaNoWriMo 2015

Final Preparations for NaNoWriMo 2015

The concept for my next novel has changed (and hopefully improved) dramatically since my last post about preparing for this year's NaNoWriMo. I suppose that's why they start the official planning period a whole month beforehand.

Whereas I had intended for my 50,000 word novel to be a rewrite that was more-or-less completely loyal to last year's concept, I discovered while outlining that there was barely any sustainable conflict inherent in the idea. You see, I wanted to write about a kid with problems going to another world that seemingly has everything he ever wanted, only to realize that the things he thinks are most important to him can't really make him happy. That all sounded well and good until I sat down and tried to actually plot out the novel. I suppose someone (more talented than I) could make that work, but I humbly realized that I could not.

With time until NaNoWriMo only growing shorter, I had to rethink everything.

I shed away every bit of the plot that I thought I wanted to write until I was left with only the core of my idea. I then brainstormed a whole new story around that core, one which had ghosts of the original idea, but was otherwise entirely new:

"Thirty-something year old Gideon Bradfield has won an all-inclusive dream vacation for two to the world-renowned and extremely exclusive Somnium Domus tropical resort. Though his wife's demanding job has prevented her from joining him on the trip, Gideon still hopes to take the opportunity to work on rekindling their marriage. On the flight to the island resort, Gideon meets Christopher, a charismatic, intelligent, and angelically handsome young man also taking a solo vacation to the famous resort. The two become fast friends, and the resort is everything Gideon could have ever dreamed of, but over time things begin to sour; his wife won't answer or return any of his calls, he's haunted by familiar but strange lucid nightmares every night, and he just can't shake the feeling that there's something not right about the Somnium Domus. What he uncovers will make him question his vacation, his marriage, his new friend, and his life itself."

Those of you who read the original synopsis may see the parallels here; Christopher is essentially the same character as Chris from the original synopsis, after all, and honestly even the plot is pretty similar when you boil it down. What's different is the focus. By metaphorically shifting my perspective two inches to the left, I was able to see a plethora of possibilities that I was blind to before. Sometimes two inches make all the difference.

I've successfully crafted a plot outline and will be spending this last week of preparation fleshing out my character and location outlines. NaNoWriMo begins this coming Sunday, November 1st. Though I'll be busy writing the novel, I'll try to blog at least once during November with a progress report.
-Ryan

Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2015

Ahoy people who read my blog!

Last year I said this about this year's NaNoWriMo:

"Perhaps next year I will take NaNoWriMo much more seriously, and really dedicate myself to meeting the 50,000 word goal. I can't help but feel incredibly accomplished and enthusiastic about the future, and I wonder what novel I might be working on next year."

By some miracle I've actually gone and done this. That's right. I'm back in — deeper than ever.

I may have failed in the past — twice, no less — but this year will be different! This year I shall write a 50,000-word novel in only thirty days! Huzzah! I've already started filling out character sheets, drafting up an outline of the plot, and brainstorming every possible facet of my future novel's structure, composition, style, tone, and all that other cool stuff. This is happening! For real this time!

What's my novel about, you ask? Well it's actually going to be a complete rewrite from scratch of the novel I attempted to write last year. Why, you ask? Because it started to suck since it was written completely by the seat of my pants (not sure what that phrase means, will have to look up later). Also I'm pretty sure that writing entirely in first-person present tense is proof of hell on Earth.

So here's my synopsis for the novel, which I hope is proof in itself that my writing has improved since last year and this novel actually stands a chance of, you know, not sucking:

"Overburdened with the stress of school and the recent deaths of several of his loved ones, 17-year-old Thomas crosses paths with a mysterious twenty-something-year-old man named Chris who is the spitting image of everything Thomas wishes he was - unquestionably attractive, muscular, confident, easy-going, and adventurous. Amazingly, Chris takes an interest in young Thomas and offers him the opportunity to enter into his world - a proposal which Thomas accepts, and one which turns out to be much more literal than he ever imagined.

Inexplicably transported to another dimension where youth is eternal and every one of your dreams is easily within reach, Thomas must choose between living the fantasy forever or struggling through his brief existence in reality, all while learning to grieve, love, grow up, and above all, live."

So yeah, I had some trouble picking a genre for that to fall under out of the given options on the website. I ended up picking "other."

So why am I taking time away from writing my years-in-progress novel for this one instead? I dunno, I feel like this event deserves its own story. One that's designed to be written in 30 days. My other novel needs to go at its own pace. Something like that.

I'm so excited!
-Ryan

Present vs. Past Tense

Almost immediately after NaNoWriMo 2014 ended I discovered a large error in my new story; an error caused partially by my new method of writing. That error? Tense.

To all you non-writers, choosing a tense to use while writing a fiction novel is no small task. It may come easier to some writers than to others, but the use of tense is not as simple as picking between "do" and "did." The difference between present tense and past tense when writing fiction reaches far beyond simple grammar.

Writing in present tense sort of forces you to, as you might guess, write all about the now. Present tense can be great for writing a story where the entire plot unfolds in a short time span, but otherwise it can cause you to get bogged down in details and events that don't matter. I've run into this problem already with my previous novel, where I had to teach myself how to turn a character walking from one location to another into a compelling scene, as well as decrease the time span of the overall story from several months to several days, but those were both challenges that I was ready, willing, and able to take on. Unfortunately I've just gotten to a point in my new novel where a large leap in time is absolutely crucial to the story, and present tense just isn't going to make sense for that.

So how did this happen? Why didn't I think ahead? Well that was sort of the point of this story. I really wanted to write something from beginning to end without looking ahead or back too much and just let it go wherever it takes me, so I didn't really put much thought into what tense I should use before I started writing. I thought that by doing as little planning as possible I would avoid many of the issues I've been having with my last attempt at a novel.

Who was I to think that I could actually get through writing an entire story without having to go back and make at least one huge revision? It seems to happen every time. Changing the story to past tense will make it much easier to make leaps in time throughout the story, but then I have to contend with the fact that my word count might drop significantly as I eliminate scenes that were written specifically to keep the flow of present tense going smoothly.

It feels kind of like I've put myself between a rock and hard place. I'd love to just go sailing forward, but this seemingly small oversight will and has been causing huge problems in my storytelling so far. My only hope is that I can counteract the loss of scenes with additions of others, but we'll just have to see how that goes.

I'm sure it will be worth it in the end, but right now it really sucks.
-Ryan

Different Methods To Write a Novel

For any first-time writer, figuring out exactly how to write a novel is no small task. I myself found that leaving the comfort of short story-writing and venturing into the unknown territory of novel-writing quite intimidating. A quick Google search reveals many helpful articles on the subject, but the bottom line is that there is no single best way to write a novel. It is up to each individual person to experiment and discover how they prefer to write a book.

In my experience, every single method for writing a book can be distilled into only two different methods. I am currently experimenting with both of these methods as, for the first time, I write two different novels at the same time.

My Novel-Writing History

My first real attempt at writing a fiction novel (not counting that one time when I was 14 and thought ten short paragraphs, if separated into their own pages, constituted a complete novel) ended in 2012 when a classroom of students told me it was terrible. I had based the idea off a series of romantic fantasies I'd had which were inspired by awful chick flicks and my own desire to have that perfect Hollywood love (spoiler: it was dating me the whole time). If you read my blog post about it (linked above) you'll notice just how optimistic I was about taking the novel in a new direction based on my peer feedback.

Well here's the post where I talk about restarting it for yet a second time. In the end it turned out that the idea I had for a novel wasn't fleshed out enough to actually be a novel; it lacked any real meaning or planning. I then decided to move onto writing a different idea that I'd actually been thinking about and taking notes on for a while (what a concept!), but then I got bored of that one and put it on the back-burner so I could write more short stories. What a tragic series of errors!

Eventually I wrote a short story that my classroom loved and even demanded that I continue. I realized that, having failed three times before, if I was going to set out to write a novel I was going to have to do it right this time.

Method 1: Plan Everything

For this method, it helps to have real novel-writing software. Believe it or not, Microsoft Word isn't the best word-processing software out there, at least it isn't when it comes to long-form creative writing. Around when I decided to give novel-writing another try, I heard about the novel-writing software known as Scrivener from one of my favorite professors. There are other similar programs out there, so feel free to look around, but Scrivener is a powerful and extensive tool for writing that allows you to organize and plan your novel to an extent that standard word-processing software doesn't even touch.

Scrivener allowed me to easily start at a very high concept level of my novel and work my way downward, slowly expanding on my ideas into an intricate web in a very easy-to-use way. Again, I'm not trying to sell you on Scrivener, I'm trying to sell you on the method that a novel must be nearly entirely written in your head before you start actually writing it.

One very popular version of this method is known as the snowflake method, which has you starting out with a single paragraph that encapsulates your entire novel, then slowly expanding on that until you've got pages written on each character, location, and scene before you even start your first draft. I don't adhere to this exact formula, but reading about it certainly helped me to find a method that worked for me. I found it much easier and less stressful to start writing a novel that I never meant to be a novel by making an outline of the story including plot points, characters, locations, and themes. Some people might then want to adhere strictly to that outline, but I found myself constantly changing details as I developed a clearer vision of what I wanted to write.

I've been writing that novel on and off for a year now, and despite the outline I've gone back and rewritten loads of pages based on my new and changing ideas, but the outline has still been very helpful in keeping my rewrites in line with the ultimate end goal. The scenes and characters may change as I write, but I can always go back to that first outline to see exactly how those changes can serve the overall original idea.

The drawback to this method, in my experience, is that I sometimes find myself wanting to take a character or event in one direction and then having to work/think hard to make that idea fit into the overall plot of the novel. It can sometimes feel like trying to force a square peg into a round hole; even though I know that square peg is going to look really, really good in that round hole, it won't fit until I make it fit. At times I was spending more time rewriting old scenes than I was writing new ones, which was more difficult and felt less rewarding since my novel's overall word count would fluctuate around the same number rather than going up.

Method 2: Let it Flow

This method is actually nearly identical to how I failed my first three attempts at writing a novel, but there's one vital difference; I'm more experienced now than I was back then.

Planning everything out is great, especially for someone new to the process like I was who wanted to write something with complex characters, foreshadowing, and an overall theme for the first time, but now that I've done that for a while and have grown weary of writing everything with an endgame in mind (and rewriting everything when parts of that endgame changes) I wanted to switch it up.

A few weeks ago I had a dream that I wanted to turn into a story. I considered turning it into a short story based solely on the dream, but the vision grew quite rapidly until I realized that I wanted to write another novel. Rather than start from a very high level, work my way downwards, and then write my way back up, I decided to start with the dream as a base on the lowest level and then work my way up from there.

Attempting this method was partially inspired by movie sequels and long-running fictional television shows; since I find it fascinating that people sometimes completely unrelated to the previous writers of a television show or movie must work within the confines of the entire history of that show or movie to put out something new and interesting.

After less than a month of writing using this method, I already had the urge to go back and change a large detail of it, but I decided instead to just roll with it and make it work. I've now made it a rule for myself that I am not allowed to go back and change anything other than the smallest nagging details while writing the first draft of this novel, and to regard everything else previously written as absolute fact within that novel's world. It is both challenging and fun to resist the urge to go back and rewrite something that I've reconsidered. The reason it is working now more than it did before (so far) is that I have no particular ending in mind, and yet I have developed a clear vision for what the base ingredients are, even if they aren't revealed to me until the very second I write them.

Now let us see which novel turns out the best, and which method I prefer in the end.
-Ryan