The Perils of Trilogy Writing!

I’m currently writing the third draft of Dangerous Phoenix and as usual, this revision is focussed on style alone. But things aren’t working out like that. I have a problem and it’s one, I think, that’s specific to writing a series. Maybe specific to writing a trilogy which has as its base the protagonist’s development over a span of years and during particular events. Structure has reared its ugly head, and a little late in the day.

Before I started on this Indian trilogy, I’d never attempted anything similar before. I could see immediately that I’d need a clear idea of where I was going over all three books and not just in book number one - not necessarily the nitty gritty detail but the overall sweep of the story line. I’d have to drop clues or at least the shadow of a hint as to what might happen in future, otherwise readers of the later book would rightly complain that the plot didn’t ‘fit’ what had gone before. That was the only difficulty I could see with writing a trilogy. But I was wrong. There are others and I’ve just come upon one.

Reading through the ms of this second book for style, I’ve been uncomfortably conscious that at times the pace slackens and slackens considerably. As a reader, I’m thinking too much narrative, where’s the dialogue?, where’s the action? So what’s causing this hiccup? When I read back over the offending parts, I discovered they were all ‘back story’. Every novel has a back story, of course. The old adage is that you start writing as near to the action as you can and drop in little nuggets of back story as you wend your way through the plot. If you find you’re having to put in too much, then you’ve started too far in and need to go back and begin the novel at an earlier point in the story.

So far, so good. But what about when you’re writing something like a trilogy? If each story has a separate plot complete in itself, which mine do, that’s fine. In each novel, you need only minimal background details of your protagonists and where they’ve come from to ‘flesh out’ that particular story line. But what if your plot depends to an extent on protagonists’ reactions to events, and those events are heavily coloured by the past. Then the past needs to be part of the story you’re writing, and that can mean an awful lot of back story. And a problem with repetition, since some of the ‘past’ will have been detailed in a previous book. I’ve rewritten some of the narrative in dialogue and it’s certainly more dynamic now, but there’s an awful lot of back story still hanging around. I’m faced with the difficult decision of just how much I can include without losing my reader or conversely, how much I can cut and still make the characters’ motivations and actions credible. I’m struggling with at the moment and if there’s an easy solution out there, please let me know!

Do You Write an SFD?

Dangerous Phoenix has reached a crucial stage. My heroine, Daisy, has pulled it off by escaping from the mausoleum (with only the slightest bit of help from her creator) and storming to the rescue. Naturally her reward is a happy ending – more or less. I have the complete story down, the characters are partly fleshed out and the setting/s are introduced. In other words I’ve finished the SFD or the ‘shitty first draft’. Now how about the second?

This is the stage I love most. It’s the moment when I travel back to the beginning of the novel and begin to fill in the gaps I left – maybe research snippets I needed to check, or a more detailed description of a particular setting, or a deeper understanding of why one of my characters is acting the way they are. It’s also the time when I can start moving ‘stuff’ around, decide just how each chapter is best structured to create flow within and between chapters. And where I discover that though I’ve been too verbose at one point, I actually need an additional scene at another. Or, horrors, I’m guilty of repeating myself. It’s rather like being a potter with a slab of clay. The slab has been moulded into roughly the right size, roughly the right shape, but it needs a more delicate touch now to pinch, to add, to reshape until gradually a miracle happens – something better, tighter, emerges from what was once a little loose, a little baggy. Then all that’s left is to decorate - or in writerly terms, do a third draft. This is where I’ll focus on style and try to make sure that wherever I read, I’ve nailed the right word.

Of course, this sequence won’t work for everyone and it’s always interesting to hear how other writers do it. But for me, it works and I’m getting ready to flex those fingers!

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Come to our Book Bash and Have Fun!

Thursday, November 28th - SAVE THE DATE!
 
We're having a party! Come and celebrate at our
Early Christmas Book Bash! Fun online party & book launch.

Four ladies writing, four books a-launching, four prizes waiting, 
one grand finale, and twelve-hours full of jo-o-lli-tyyyyy!' 
(Sung to twelve days of Xmas tune') 

Release Your Inner Heroine!

The Major's Guarded Heart is published tomorrow, Nov 1.
It's my last Regency romance, at least for the time being, and I'm sorry to say goodbye if only temporarily to my swashbuckling characters. Particularly my heroines who are never anything less than courageous and spirited. The kind of heroine I'd choose to be!

Which brings me to a great quiz forwarded to me by a writer friend, Emily Harvale.

Which Jane Austen heroine are you?

It's at http://www.strangegirl.com/emma/quiz.php
and fun to do - so indulge your inner Austen!

Does Jonathan Franzen have a point about Twitter?

Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections and Freedom, hasn’t been happy with technology for some time. He uses it, of course, but has warned that it is ‘a weird, compulsive, almost addictive thing which doesn’t seem to have much to do with what were thought to be the great benefits of it.’ Recently he’s been talking about Twitter and sounding almost apocalyptic. He finds it ‘particularly alarming’ that freelance writers are now forced into ‘constant self promotion’ instead of ‘developing their craft’. New authors, he claims, are being told they must improve their social network presence before their manuscripts can be considered and cites 250 followers on Twitter as the point at which a new writer’s work will warrant notice. For him, this is terribly wrong. The act of writing is the antithesis of Twitter’s shared communal ethic. ‘The whole definition of literature is that people go off by themselves and develop a distinctive voice. It’s not a communal enterprise.’

It’s tempting for me to agree wholeheartedly with those sentiments. I’ve always had problems understanding how Twitter can work for a writer. I’ve seen the social network portrayed positively as a conversation between ‘friends’ - people contributing their thoughts, responding to others, supporting followers. Yet that hasn’t been my experience. It has seemed far more like a crowd of disparate voices shouting into the void. Only when individuals actually know each other through some other medium - email, internet forums and dare I say it, face to face – is there likely to be any response, any attempt at a ‘conversation’. Maybe it’s just that I’m woefully inadequate on Twitter. In over a year I’ve managed to amass the princely sum of 93 followers. Sounds pathetic? But it’s the result of only following people who interest me and when I see someone who notches up five thousand followers, I’m stunned. How can any one person be interested in five thousand different individuals?

So if you’re a writer and use Twitter, what’s the benefit to you? There has to be one. As Franzen intimates, time spent tweeting is not time spent ‘developing your craft’. Does it help authors sell their books? I’m dubious. How many people respond to the ‘Buy my latest Novel’ kind of shout. Very few I imagine. Does it lead to useful discussions on the craft of writing? Occasionally a tweet has taken me to an interesting blog post that’s been worth following up but that’s rare. Or is the site’s sole benefit to raise a writer’s profile? I think this must be the case, though I’m not even sure it does that. Still, I’m willing to be converted on Twitter’s virtues so here I am, waiting to be persuaded. Somehow, though, I think I’ll be hanging in that void again!

A New Name

I’ve just signed a contract under a different writing name and ‘met’ my new editor for the first time.

A new name for a new genre. I’m leaving pure romance behind – at least for the moment – and embracing mystery, though the book still involves romance of a kind. I’ve been scratching my head over how to name what I’m writing and ‘romantic suspense’ is the nearest I can get. In the US romantic suspense is a recognised genre but it seems little known here in the UK. That may be one of the many challenges ahead!

Over the last few months, I’ve been debating whether or not to carry on writing as Isabelle Goddard. I talked a little about changing writing names on my blog in January and the discussion there is still a valid one. It would make sense to continue with my existing name - after four novels, and two more being published very shortly, it’s a name that’s beginning to get known and it would be helpful to capitalise on that fact. On the other hand, the new book is definitely a different genre and if people buy it without looking too carefully at the book description – and they sometimes do – they could end up disappointed customers. In the end, after much humming and hawing, I’ve decided to go for a new name. So meet Merryn Allingham!

The decisions don’t stop there though. The next one is whether or not to build a new website or whether simply to ‘share’ the existing one between two author names. And then, of course, there’s a new facebook page to consider and a new twitter address. I’m beginning to realise that it’s going to mean a complete restart. But then writing is always a challenge, so why not set myself one more?