Nick Bryan

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Comic scripting – Invisible words? Too many words? Words? (WriteBlog #9)

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And now, a change of pace: a blog not about NaNoWriMo. About six blogs ago, I wrote about a bunch of short pitches I was putting together for some comic stories. Well, while I busied myself with bashing out a novel-third in Nov, I also heard that two of those had been accepted. So, yes, if all goes well, two shorts by me will appear in GreyHaven anthologies in the future. Good times.

Now, since I only had to write paragraph-long summaries originally, this news also means I must now write the scripts for both these stories. So, that’s been my project since NaNo finished. How’s that gone?

I haven’t written any comic script since my failed Script Frenzy effort of 2012 (Remember Script Frenzy? Remember the awful portmanteau “screnzy” which used to send a shiver up my spine?) so these muscles have needed to creak back into life. I’ve read a lot of comics lately at least, so remember how the storytelling works, but describing stuff? In detail? To an actual collaborator? New territory.

Lots of words no-one will ever get to read. Lots of trying to get across what needs to be there without imposing too hard on the artist’s freedom to do something interesting with the page. Lots of reading comic scripts and script notes by comics writers online to see if it helps. I don’t yet know who the artists will be, so I’m trying to make the script as everyone-friendly as possible.

Trying to also avoid the rookie comics writer’s mistake of overloading panels with text, because even if it seems like nothing to me on the script, count up the words and compare them to an existing comics panel and I suddenly realise that, yeah, put those bad boys down in word balloons and the art may as well be a blank space. Which, at least, saves a lot of work by the artist.

So, hard work, new skills. Nonetheless, I still love comics as an art form and the idea of seeing my stories in arted and printed form makes it all seem worthwhile. So I’ve gotta finish the first one, start the second one… maybe buy some Christmas presents or something too? It’s strange new territory, but after burning the candle at both ends prose-wise during NaNo, it’s kinda nice to be working in this different structure for a while.

Thirty Nine Thousand, Six Hundred And Thirty Four Words – NaNoWriMo Ends Here! (WriteBlog #8)

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Calendar fans will note that National Novel Writing Month runs another few days, until this Saturday, but for me, it is all over. Because, well, I finished my novel, and as discussed in these WriteBlogs at some length, that was the job.

I could probably find a few thousand words to put me over fifty thousand, maybe a between-chapters diversion where my characters embark on a lengthy game of Scrabble. But I don’t really care. I have finished my novel.

Well, the first draft, anyway. As blogs are currently lining up to tell us, finishing your NaNo draft of a novel is not the same as having a complete book, and it’s probably best to at least read over it a few times before sending it out to everyone. Chuck Wendig did a better blog about this than I ever will.

But as discussed here last week, I’m well aware that my book is not ready for primetime, both due to prose clunkiness and the jarring “How much did I just drink?” plot revisions between each chapter. So, yup, got the need for editing, thanks. What other notable feelings can I record on finishing the NaNo novel?

Well, fear mostly. I’ve managed to finish a book without hating it, which is a big step, but I’m also aware of the sheer scale of the rewriting required. I’m not necessarily exaggerating when I say at least a third of it needs to be redone. The level of change involved might be too massive to really qualify as “editing”, but I’m going to call it that anyway to keep calm.

I was coping with this better when I hadn’t finished the draft, to be honest. Now I’m faced with the need to set about doing it, I’m starting to panic properly. Fortunately, writing convention dictates I put the book in a drawer for at least a short time to get some distance from the story (and the terror) – not to mention, Christmas is coming which is always a helpful excuse to avoid work.

So I’m shoving the book away until January, when my fear will hopefully transform into a newfound commitment to high-speed editing/rewriting/whatever I’m calling it. Regardless of my nerves, I’m pretty chuffed to have finished well inside my self-imposed deadline, anyway. A 100K first draft novel in seven months is pretty good for me.

And don’t worry, WriteBlog fans, I never actually stop working – not only will Hobson & Choi continue, I have an entirely different writing project to type now. More on that next week, probably.

HINT: it involves something I’ve mentioned here before.

NaNoWriMo Week Three – So it wasn’t just a phase? (WriteBlog #7)

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NaNoWriMo - 21 Days In

So, as of this writing, I am 31.3K words through NaNo, and the bad news is: barring a miracle, I am unlikely to make 50,000. I know, I was disappointed too. It’s still possible I might finish the novel, then crunch through about five chapters of Hobson & Choi in advance to take me over the edge, but realistically I am probably going to pound out the final scenes early next week, then spend the rest of the month partying.

And by partying, I mean watching DVDs and tweeting. Nonetheless, there is good news too, and it was kinda spoilered in the last para: unless I break all my fingers in the next few days, I will most likely finish the first draft book I am working on. So that’s nice, for reasons I already outlined last week. See adjacent graph for more detail on my word progress.

This will be my fifth or sixth stab at NaNoWriMo, and I’ve almost always made the 50K, but 2013 will be the very first time I’ve managed to complete a novel during the challenge. If only I’d started said novel in November (rather than April), I would be living the NaNo Fairy Tale.

As it is, I’ll have to be happy with just meeting my own personal deadlines. However, I’m also gathering up a towering, looming monster of an edits list. Last week, I also ruminated on how many planning and plotting problems I’ve run into as I’ve tried to make the final act of the story work, but concluded that I thought I’d finally arrived at a new plan which got me out of those particular woods.

Turns out, that particular oasis was a mirage, and beyond the woods, there were just similar woods, with spaces between them to catch my breath. They’ve become easier to traverse with practice, but nonetheless, steering this fucker to its close is akin to wrestling an octopus. You just can’t seem to pin down all the arms.

Please don’t ask me what an octopus is doing in the woods, I do not know. Clearly it is a member of the less well known octopi species Mixus Metaphorus, which dwells in whatever environment a rambling writer requires.

Basically: I had to re-plan chunks of the ending between every chapter. Each one now refers to a version of the story which doesn’t completely exist. If you tried to read my current draft, you’d wonder if you were having blackouts.

Despite all that, I’m going to press on until I’ve finished the story, for all the reasons I said last week, and then, come 2014, I’m going to take the whole damn thing in hand. And I’m still not going to refer to it as Draft 0.5 or anything like that.

NaNoWriMo Week Two – Book Existence (WriteBlog #6)

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I was chugging along nicely with the novel for a while – it had been around three whole chapters since I last stopped and reworked half the rules of my fantasy setting – when I ground to a halt and thought: Right. Shit. This may not be working.

Hate it when that happens. Happily, after only three hours of staring into space and 507 words of notes, I was able to get back on track.

This is the fourth time this has happened since I started the book, to be fair. A couple of pauses back, I ended up moving a chapter two spaces forward and writing its replacement out of order. Also decided to introduce some extra suffering in the beginning, which needs to be woven into the rest of it at a later stage.

For the first time in my life, I have started a document with changes I will have to make as soon as I’ve finished this first draft – holding them in my memory was getting unreliable. A number of times, I’ve wondered why I’m bothering continuing writing the ending, when I know I’m going to do dramatic rewrites on the start, which may will necessitate knock-on changes to the conclusion.

I’ve decided it’s important I finish the thing, basically. I’ve seen it as advice in blogs, had it delivered to me in real life, and reached the point of agreeing. It’s psychologically useful to get to the point of “This book exists and I am tinkering with it,” rather than “OH DEAR SWEET MERCIFUL LORD JESUS I KEEP GOING BACK TO CHANGE THE START AND AN END WILL NEVER COME.”

Or at least, I’ve decided it’ll be psychologically useful to me. Your mileage may vary etc. I did briefly wonder whether the inevitable changes are so severe that I should rechristen this as Draft 0.5, but no, fuck it. That’s just dissing myself pointlessly. I’ve spent six months writing this, parts of it are pretty good, the potential is there. Be strong, Nick. Finish the book, then we can move on to the editing.

If you’re anticipating a lot of weekly WriteBlogs about editing once this draft is finished, then you are a wise reader. For now, though: I still have no story idea I like better than this one, I’m still determined to get it as good as it can be. Remind me to re-read this in January/February when the editing is beating me down.

If you want a writing-related blog by me with less stream of consciousness and more lists/jokes/focus, I did a blog on the Tuesday Serial site recently about my adventures in awkward webserial marketing online – try that. Also, no, little mention of NaNoWriMo in this blog besides the title. Not worrying about word count much at the moment, sorry NaNoFans. Maybe next week.

NaNoWriMo Week One – Uh-huh? (WriteBlog #5)

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You wouldn’t think I’d have time to dash off mid-length blogs about my writing process in the heart of the NaNoWriMo maelstrom, but I’m trying to treat this piece as a short warm-up for later greatness. However, if it seems slightly more rushed or badly spelt than usual, the month-long writing bender is my entire excuse.

So, I’ve been on the NaNo gravy train for nearly a whole week, I’ve written just under seven thousand words (so yes, I am pretty behind) – how is it going? Can I describe my experiences? Well.

I’ve been trying not to worry about word count too much, whilst simultaneously not ignoring it, and that doesn’t make a vast amount of sense. Basically, if I ignore the NaNo word-churning ethos, I just won’t produce anything, which isn’t helpful – but on the other hand, I also don’t want to churn out shite.

There have been a couple of days where I’ve thought – even as I’m writing something – “Fuck, I’m clearly just rattling that off to hit word count.” Case in point: I’m 99% sure that once I sit down to do today’s NaNo words, I’ll be deleting the final section of yesterday’s scene and rewriting it. This is arguably against the Sacred NaNo Spirit, but having worked on this novel all year and been surprisingly happy with it, I don’t really want to spend November grafting some kind of rotting tail onto it. Yet again, I’m trying to use the NaNo Spirit but only when it’s useful to me.

The good news is that despite my angst about quality, I’m just about on track to finish the book (if not the required 50K) by the end of the month, which will mean I’ve at least won my own personal battle. I’ve also been distracted repeatedly by my various other projects – Hobson & Choi will continue, of course, but if you’re a huge fan of my TV reviews, you may see a dip in those as the month goes on. Sorry about that.

Yesterday, I got the good news that H&C was #9 in the Jukepop charts for October, which is yet another personal best and one I might struggle to replicate/beat in future months, to be honest. Nonetheless, good to know people are enjoying it – the even more gratifying part is that I didn’t badger that many personal friends into voting during Oct, so those votes could be from real human interest. Score.

And #39 of H&C will be with you in a few hours, so that’s exciting. Right now, I’ve got to plug a blog post on Twitter (not just this one) and record H&C Podcast #11, then publish #39 – and only after all that can I get back to work on NaNoWriMo. Busy life but I like it a lot. See you all next week.

Pre-NaNoWriMo WriteBlog #4 PlanStraVaGanZa

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Tomorrow, NaNoWriMo starts and as I’ve said before, I’ll be working on the final third of my current novel in progress. This will probably not be fifty thousand words, although once I add on four Hobson & Choi chapters for the month and maybe improvise a short story about a man taking his dog for a walk, I might make it over the top.

But, regardless, that isn’t the point. I’m pleased with the opening 66.6% of this novel (even if it still has no title), so it would be a shame to bolt a load of slapdash verbal diarrhoea onto the end and quadruple my editing time.

So, with that in mind, I spent four hours (or three full plays of the new Arcade Fire album) in my regular writing-cafe this afternoon trying to produce a decent plan to keep myself on track.

Seriously, it took ages. I know a lot of people who are trying to write/start whole novels in NaNo, and that must be an epic planning task. Then again, they may not have tried to break them down scene-by-scene like I did. In the eternal NaNoWriMo debate of planning vs making it up (or “plotting vs pantsing”, if you like pants), I’m definitely a plotter. Writing the actual chapters is just fleshing out a skeleton.

Said skeleton is constructed using a tree of folders and documents in Scrivener, if you’re curious. Scrivener might not be for everyone, but for those of us who enjoy imposing a sense of order on the universe, it’s great. If you tweet using Tweetdeck, give writing with Scrivener a try.

Considering I’ve known where I was going with this story for a while, I was surprised how bloody long planinng took. All the cool scenes I’d imagined for the future were a bitch to engineer into place. That’s the problem with writing sci-fi/fantasy – you have to make up your own rules, than actually follow them.

I thought I’d have time to do this blog a bit earlier, but no, here I am at 8PM, just tapping it out before going for a few restful hours not thinking about NaNo.

And then start writing at midnight, obviously. Cleverly, I’ve planned myself into opening with the most depressing scene possible, featuring grim terminal illness goodbyes. On the plus side, the rest of November will be a merry treat in comparison. I considered writing scenes out of order to avoid this downbeat debut, but decided to just swallow it. At least my first real November daytime writing session will have that already done.

And on that note, going to go do something else. Good luck if you’re reading this and also attempting NaNo, feel free to share any angst below or buddy me up on the NaNoWriMo site if that’s your bag. Another writing post next week, unless I hit my head and forget I have a blog.