Category: Writing & Stories

Yzabel / October 2, 2005

Am I weird or not, this is the question. I find that it’s easier for me to write certain scenes—especially the ones containing lots of dialogue—if I “act” them first. I know it may feel, read and sound very weird, yet it helps me to get the feeling of the scene, of the atmosphere, and even to create the dialogue itself without having to struggle with the words to make them sound like what real people would say. Nevertheless, I know that were anyone to see me do that through my window, with a pencil and notebook in hand and pacing around acting, they’d probably think I’m a weirdo. Or repeating for a play, with some luck!Evidently, I don’t do that for every scene. I’d have a hard time trying to act a swordfight or a spaceship attack without breaking the furniture by accident in the process, and I know where to stop and where to pick the pen or keyboard again to let only my mind and fingers work, instead of my whole body. Sometimes, I wonder if this tendency hasn’t been enhanced by the few years I’ve spent taking part in theater plays, back in high school, although I know I was doing this whole acting part way before that already.Perhaps I’m a performance person who isn’t fully aware of this yet.acting, scenes, writing

Yzabel / September 29, 2005

This is a little detail I’ve noticed recently, while writing a scene: I tend to not describe what I call “one-time” characters. You know, these characters you’ll see once in the novel, then never again—or so much later that it’ll always be time to give a more accurate physical description about them if they’re important enough at that moment. The taxi driver that has only one line of text to say, the new manager that the main character will only meet briefly before being fired from the company… I like to call them “courier-types”, too, because I often use them to carry a message or fetch a more important character; in themselves, they don’t have any role.Read More

Yzabel / September 28, 2005

I did a word count on my novel yesterday. As the software I use (TexNotes Pro) allows me to create separate notes instead of a huge file, I also did a word count per note, each note holding a chapter. Roughly, my chapters are around 3200 words long. I must admit that I have absolutely no idea whether this is too long, too short or just about right, since I’ve never took the time to count words in chapters of a published book to compare. It’s just the way things are at the moment, in what is my first draft.I have the feeling that my chapters aren’t “long”—I often end them on (semi) cliffhangers, and I have a natural tendency to not make gazillions of scenes occur in the same chapter, since it’d then make it too crammed and complex. However, this made me wonder: what’s the average length, anyway? It probably has to change depending on the kind of story told, and I very much doubt there’s any “law of writing” about this (except “don’t make chapters containing 100,00 words each”).In any case, out of curiosity, what is an accepted number here—or rather, what’s your own accepted number?chapters, word+count, writing

Yzabel / September 25, 2005

My previous post about chapters overhaul made me wonder if many other writers do that—keeping their drafts?I’ve noticed that I tend to do that a lot, not to force them into a manuscript later on, not in the hopes of using them for something else, but simply as memories, so to say. I file them into “old drafts” folders, and months or years later, I’m always glad to be able to read them again. These aren’t necessarily short drafts; sometimes, they’ll be entire chapters that I’ve rewritten, or that I’ve decided to not integrate at all into the story anymore. There’s a stash of short stories in these folders as well, of course.I’m not sure why I do that. Perhaps I don’t like the idea of losing weeks’ worth of work, or perhaps I appreciate being able to reflect on my former ways of writing, to see how I’ve evolved. I get this feeling very often when I take back texts I’ve typed in English four or five years ago: it allows me to realize how much I’ve improved since then, and this is an interesting thing.I’ve already wondered if I just shouldn’t trash these drafts completely, in order to not get “influenced” by them in any case, but I know I’d regret it in a few years from now, since I always do.Maybe I’m just some kind of weird collector when it comes to this!drafts, writing

Yzabel / September 22, 2005

Well, I did something crazy: I threw away a good 30 pages of work yesterday. On the premises of a dream. And I’m happy about it.Of course, I’m not going to feed you all with talks of premonitory dreams. No, I just happened to dream a scene that, with some changes, would have fit my novel well. I mulled over it almost all day long (travelling by train to Strasbourg and back gives me lots of time to think), and the more I wondered about it, the more I wondered why I hadn’t thought about it before. Sure, I’d never directly use a scene from a dream—mine are so weird it wouldn’t bear any sense. Bouncing on one in order to enhance an already existing idea, on the other hand, isn’t something I’m afraid of.Sometimes, I tend to clutch too much to dead wood, to things I’ve written weeks or months ago, wanting to use these elements no matter what because I like them. Indeed, it’s not rare for me to scribble down a scene for which I have inspiration; later on, when what precedes this part of the story is written, I simply add it, tweaking it if there’s need to. However, such scenes may happen to be more bothersome than anything else, especially if I find myself filling the blanks with elements that aren’t very thrilling just so that I can link them to the main body of the story. When I find myself thinking “this development is boring”, this tells me something.Well, this development was indeed boring, in that it was leading me directly to one or two chapters of “explanations”, which I usually dislike as a reader. My planned summary of these chapters looked good on paper at first, but not so good anymore once I was actually writing them. I don’t like explanation scenes, I prefer give out clues and information here and there along the story. Why I found myself dragged toward such a direction is a mystery even to me.I don’t have any regrets. There are things an author sometimes has to let go, things that were pleasant to write, but don’t fit the current story anymore. Recognizing when to do so, and with what, is a nifty skill to develop, I think.planning, writing

Yzabel / September 21, 2005

A little problem I ran into not so long ago, as I was introducing a character in my novel: what to do with those that are, technically speaking, “people from the street”, and who’re supposed to talk in slang at best, and with much swearing at worst? A street urchin raised to be a thief in a medieval-fantasy town setting sure wouldn’t talk like a noblewoman, nor a beggar like a king (unless they’re exceptions resulting from social descension, and in this case, they need to remain just that—exceptions).I don’t want to fill entire dialogues with cursing, as it is is rude and not especially pleasant to read anyway, but it is also evident to me that not every character in my book can talk in a nice manner, not when they’re from a social origin that wouldn’t fit this at all. Same problem with slang, which very nature is to make it less understandable to “those who don’t get it”. Simply looking at nowadays’ slang, always changing, is a good enough proof of this. The slang I used to talk at school ten years ago isn’t the same 16-years old talk today, and for them, I’d probably be considered and old schmuck already. This is why I can’t focus too much on detailed slang, else the readers would just not understand my characters’ speech patterns. “Immersion” sure doesn’t mean “being left clueless”.So what to do? I’ve been mulling over a few solutions, although I haven’t settled on any for the moment, and am still left pondering:Read More