The devil's in the details

The dragon’s head alone was as large as a cow.  It was covered in thick layers of sharp horns, its eyes were golden globes of fire set back in the deep shadows of its face.  Jagged points lined its spine as its sinuous neck emerged from the hidden cavern like a giant snake.

I've been struggling through writing descriptions.  I've noticed I glossed over or completely ignored the physical descriptions of some of my characters as well as the landscapes.  It looks like I've found a weak spot.  In a scene I've been working on, I'm trying to describe an enormous red dragon as it emerges from its lair.  I had to look up pictures of the dragon and try my best to describe what I saw.  It still felt weak.  I looked up people's descriptions of dragons in poetry and in stories and it helped somewhat.  I thought, why didn't I think of that?

I'm definitely going to need to work on this and I have a feeling that my second draft will be about adding more description.  I'm not going to worry about it too much for now.  It's overwhelming enough to just write the first draft.  Get it on paper and then fill in the details later.  

Here's some exercises I found online to help develop your description skills (I'm going to work on describing everything I see from now on):

Something you can do to be more descriptive is to give "life" to inanimate objects, abstracts, or animals in your story or essay. Give them human characteristics. Onomatopoetic words come in handy. These are words whose sounds imitate the sound they describe. Examples are buzz, whir, sigh, bang, and murmur.

Use fresh words in your descriptions. 

Forget about writing something vague like: "They walked slowly to the park." 

Just how slowly did they walk?
Did they trudge?
Did they slog along through mud washed out by a recent rain?
Did they drag along with chins drooping and eyes moping hopelessly?

Remember, if you want your reader to experience the same thing you've experienced - or experience something you've imagined - write and describe it well.

Now it's your turn.

Turn these bland sentences into sentences that ooze with description people can see, hear and touch. Make your descriptions so vivid your reader see, feel, taste, hear or smell them just by reading what you write.

1. The song began.
2. A police car went by.
3. The pie was tart.
4. A little boy stood still.
5. Her hands were rough.

Now try writing a paragraph or two using these prompts to guide you. Remember, Be descriptive.

1. Look out your window. What do you see?
2. Describe yourself when you were between 5 and 8 years old.
3. Close your eyes and imagine you're in a room full of people. You're the only blind person there.
Describe the room and the people in your mind.
4. You've gone to a carnival before, right? Write what it looks like. Imagine you'll read your description to a blind child.
5. Choose 12 small objects in your house. Put them all in a box. Without looking into the box, touch each object one by one. Hold each object for 3-5 minutes, then describe what that object is.

Copyright 2003 Shery Ma Belle Arrieta

Write it even if it sucks

One of the problems I have with writing is my perfectionism.  Sometimes I get stuck figuring out what to write because I can't think of a perfect way to express myself or a perfect plot twist or a perfect scene or a perfect whatever.

To help me with this, in my word document in which I'm writing my story I add a header so that this phrase shows up on the top of every single page:  "Write it even if it sucks.  A sucky book is better than no book at all."

20,000 words!

I have reached 20,000 words and it feels great!  I really have the snowflake method to thank for this progress as it has kept me on track.

There were times during my writing when I became lost or bored and I didn't want to keep writing.  Because I knew where my plot was basically going, I skipped ahead to a scene that was more interesting and could come back to the other scene when I had some inspiration to finish it.

It's really made the whole experience way more enjoyable then it has ever been before when I attempted to write a book (attempted and failed because I was bored with it).  It feels like I've been playing a video game.  Do you remember those old infocom games where it was all text and you had to type in commands?  That's what the writing process has been like.  I feel excited when I write (most of the time-and if I don't feel excited, I go and do something else or write a different scene).  I keep wondering what's going to happen next.  It's not that I don't know the plot of my story, I had 25 pages worth of notes written before I even started, but how that plot plays out, what the little details are, and the unexpected changes in the plot keep it exciting.  For example, with all the outlining and character development I've done, the main character has slipped into the background and a different character that I never even planned has clawed his way to the forefront.  The same major events are still occurring, but there's many unexpected twists and turns.

I look forward to writing because I want to know the end of the story!  Is it going to be what I had in mind or will the characters hijack it as this new character has done?  It's a mystery.

Am I a pantser?

I'm having a hard time sticking to the snowflake method.  Originally, it was very helpful.  Now I'm kindof bored.  I'm going to jump into writing and see how it goes.  If I get stuck, I'll go back to the snowflake method.

There are two extremes of writing, from what I understand.  One is the pantser who just writes whatever comes to her as she goes along-by the seat of her pants.  This type of author has no set idea and fumbles around until the story writes itself.  The other extreme is the ultra outliner who has everything set in stone before she starts writing.  I think I'm somewhere in between.  I like having an outline and an idea of what's going to happen, but I want some creative freedom.  Anyhow, we'll see how it goes.

Step 6 continued

Okay, so this is what I've got so far for the first bullet point.  I tried to do it as just more points, but writing a narrative made the ideas flow easier.  I'm also trying to not get too narrative because I don't want to get into truly writing.  I just want to get ideas down-what is the scene, what is going on, what do we see.  I'm still not sure I don't want to just jump into writing, but I'll stick with it a little longer:

A small farming village in Thesk, along the foothills of the Dragonsjaw Mountains

Along the Dragonsjaw mountain foothills, there is a small faming village named XXXX.  Going about their normal day-to-day business they never expect any trouble.  It’s a fairly peaceful area.  There are some dragons in the mountains, plenty of copper dragons, a few red dragons, but none ever bother the tiny village.  It’s too small to be worth their while.  Occasionally a copper dragon will play a few tricks, but even that is rare.  It is a typical picturesque day in the village when a child spies a shape in the sky.  He tugs on his father’s robe and points up.  The father recognizes it as a dragon and sounds the alarm, yelling to the villagers that it is a dragon.  The villagers begin to rush around getting kids into the houses and the few valuable horses into barns so the dragon doesn’t see them and is tempted to eat them.  The village isn’t in a total panic because they’ve only had interactions with copper dragons, so they’re relieved when a copper dragon flies into sight.

Step 6 of the snowflake method

I'm about to start step six, which is expanding my paragraph summaries of the novel into one page summaries.  I'm getting a little worried that it might be overanalyzing, the dreaded con of the snowflake method.  However, I'm going to stick with this one.  I know I skipped step five which is expanding the character synopsis because of the same reason.  Well, that and my earlier character synopsis was pretty fleshed out-I think at least.  It would be nice to see what other people do for theirs and see how in depth it is.  The snowflake project has an example and compared to that, I think I'm doing pretty good.  Not saying that his is bad, I just think that mine is about the same.  Anyhow, I'm going to get working on step five and we'll see how it goes.

So first thing is I take my paragraphs from Step 2 and put each paragraph on a separate page.  Then I separated each plot idea.  Here's my first paragraph:

A small farming village in Thesk, along the foothills of the Dragonsjaw Mountains, has a problem with a Copper dragon.  Normally copper dragons are peaceful, if a bit eccentric.  This dragon flew into the village furious that its carefully collected treasure hoard was gone, which it isn’t.  The dragon blamed the villagers and demanded they return his treasure.  Stealing a villager, he threatened to do the same to the rest of the villagers and flew off to his lair.  Knowing that there were some adventurers in the closeby city of XXXX, the villagers begged the adventurers to come and help them by killing the copper dragon.

(Note: I still haven't figured out which city the adventurers are in when the Thesk villagers contact them so I'll have to figure that out in this step-it could be important). 

Then I separate each idea.

• A small farming village in Thesk, along the foothills of the Dragonsjaw Mountains
• has a problem with a Copper dragon.
• Normally copper dragons are peaceful, if a bit eccentric.  
• This dragon flew into the village furious
• its carefully collected treasure hoard was gone, which it isn’t.  
• The dragon blamed the villagers 
• demanded they return his treasure.  
• Stealing a villager, he threatened to do the same to the rest of the villagers 
• flew off to his lair.  
• Knowing that there were some adventurers in the closeby city of XXXX, the villagers begged the adventurers to come and help them by killing the copper dragon.

Okay, I have my plot ideas separated.  Now I take the first idea and think about it-and if I get stuck, I just skip to another idea.  Hmmm, no ideas whatsoever right now so I'm going to take a break from the blog and just sit and daydream...

Character 1-Airgid (Air-uh-gid)

Dragon-girl-Airgid: 

Summary:  Airgid is a silver dragon, usually in the form of a young woman, who has resigned herself to the requirements and self-punishment of duty and shame. 

Motivation:  Airgid wants to be carefree and happy.  She has lived all of her life serving “duty” and has never done what makes her happy.  She is angry at the silver dragons for punishing and exiling her, but refuses to admit to this anger and the desire to prove herself.

Goal:  Airgid wants to be allowed back into the silver dragons.

Conflict:  Airgid was raised to always bow to her duties.  Because of her time living as an orc, the silver dragons ceremonially executed her and she is now dead to them.  Airgid can’t imagine ignoring this strong cultural action or even fighting to prove herself.  She is dead and dead dragons can’t do this.  Airgid doesn’t know anything except duty.

Epiphany:  Airgid fights to save dragonkind and in the process learns there is more to life than just duty.  She falls in love with Tobann, develops a strong friendship with Béasa and the dwarves, lives adventures and does things that are more than requirements of duty.  She realizes that the silver dragons were unjust and that duty can be balanced with love and mercy.

Airgid came from an ancient and extremely well respected dragon family.  Her parents were considered among the ancients and she was the last wyrm they had.  Airgid was a great leader among the silver dragons, as much as they have leaders.  She had distinguished herself in her learning of other races and her abilities to negotiate, which is valued among silver dragons.  A century before, the orcs had attacked the silver dragons and a cannonball (maybe magical) struck her down out of the sky and behind enemy lines.  For some reason when she fell, she shape changed (maybe due to a spell?) into an orc.  Disoriented, confused and with amnesia, she fought and lived as an orc for a number of years before her silver-dragon band found and rescued her.  However, what they saw disgusted them.  Living as an orc meant being as savage, barbaric and cruel as an orc.  Thinking she was an orc, she fought the dragons to stay in the orc caves and killed one of them.  When they brought Airgid back to the dragon lands, it took months and a lot of magic to recover her memories and to convince her she was a dragon, getting her to shape change back.  The death of another silver dragon results in execution; however because of the circumstances, the dragonkind allowed a ceremonial execution-the death ceremony.  The death ceremony is the ritual exiling of a dragon out of the silver dragon world and making her dead to the clans.  Airgid can come and go as she pleases, but she now is a ghost, which the dragon people don’t see (they ignore her presence).  She can only communicate through the silver-dragon “shaman” in a sham séance. 

            Airgid is high on conscientiousness.  She humbly knows her duty and that is all she knows.  She doesn’t understand rebellion or fighting against what one’s society decides.  It is her duty to uphold her culture.  This has left her without a sense of fun or adventure, and it has also left her bored, icy and ready to snap. 

        Airgid doesn’t trust Béasa.  She’s had interactions with Drows before and believes they are all evil and Béasa must have an ulterior motive.  She wants to convince Tobann of this, but he trusts Béasa implicitly.

Step three-coming up with characters

This one is exciting!  I've been really looking forward to doing this step and seeing how it changes my view of the characters and the story.  The idea is to write a character sheet for each main character including:

• The character's name
• A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline
• The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
• The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
• The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
• The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
• A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline

I like this because it really fleshes out the characters for my mental video game (the way I think about writing my book).  When you play a video game, you have the storyline and the settings set up and then you often design your characters.  That's what I've done so far.  I can't wait to start playing the game.

Step two of the snowflake method...an evolution

Step two of the snowflake method is expanding the one sentence summary into a paragraph.  According to this method, a good story has an introductory setting, 3 disasters and an ending.  It was really hard for me to come up with this because I kept changing my mind.  The more research I did, the more I changed things, although they weren't huge changes for the most part.  

Update:  This was actually the hardest step because I had to really think things through and plot (uh-huh pun intended) the course of the story.  What were the big events?  How did they work together?  Why were the characters involved (this really helped with the next step, coming up with character synopses)? I had to throw out things that didn't work and make sense of it all.  I think this is the most valuable step of the entire snowflake method.

The first outline I wrote up had good elves going bad, which I still think is a good idea, but it didn't stick.

Disaster #1: Dragon threatens village, is insane because of cursed magical item, band must find dragon and get the item off

Disaster #2: rogue elves are trying to kill copper dragons, band must fight elves which doesn’t go well until…

Disaster #3: Dragon-girl reveals herself as silver dragon to save band from elves, which freaks hero out and he leaves, the man who is hunting hero catches up with group and captures dragon-girl in order to lure in hero

Ending: Hero overcomes his personal insecurities as a man and faces the hunter in order to save the dragon-girl.  The band decides to continue the quest to rescue the dragons because the dragon-girl’s clan is under attack next.

Then I started going crazy and I realized that this would make an awesome series of books.  I haven't even written one book and I'm already planning a series.  In the first book, the copper dragons are attacked, the silver dragons in the second and the gold dragons in the third.

Disaster 1: Copper dragon

Disaster 2: Silver dragon

Disaster 3: Gold Dragon

Ending: 4 dragons must band together, red dragons won’t join-Tobann is required to embrace his red dragon side and throw away his chance with the magical item that can turn him back into a normal person.

So here's the paragraph I came up with.

The second prince is jealous of his older brother’s birthright and plans to take over the kingdom by killing the good dragons and thereby gaining the support of the evil red dragons.  To begin his plan, he craftily has a group of rogue elves slip a cursed magical bracer into the lairs of the copper dragons.  This bracer drives the copper dragons insane and the hope is the local humans will kill the dragons.  One copper dragon flies into the village of Aonorach demanding the humans restore his gold hord which he believes they have stolen.  He grabs a local villager and takes off with her, threatening the village that he will continue to kill villagers until he has his gold.

Then I realized this was more of an introduction and I tried listing it out again, especially now that I had some ideas of the background of the story.

1. Prince is jealous, wants to take over kingdom

2. Copper dragon is driven insane with cursed magical bracer and village hire a band of dragon killers to kill it.

3.  After removing the bracer, the band hunt down the Drow elves who snuck the bracer into the dragon’s lair-Airgid must turn herself into a dragon to keep band from getting killed, Tobann leaves because of this

4.  The Drow priestess hunting the hero catches the band and holds the heroine hostage to lure the hero back.

5.  The hero saves the girl and the band continues the quest to save the other metallic dragons after finding out that the dragon-girl’s clan is next.

Hmm, better, but it still didn't seem to work.  I tried writing an outline for the series so that I could get a better idea...

There is an evil wizard who is trying to take over the world. 

He wants to use the red dragons to do this

In order to get the red dragons cooperation, he has to appeal to their greed and their cowardice

He offers them the chance to be the only breed of dragon left alive if they help him take over the world-and of course they get to take all the treasure they want

He will kill off the copper, gold and silver dragons

He tries to kill the copper first because of their cleverness and because there are more of them than the gold and silver, which are rare

The wizard wants to kill the dragons without implicating himself because he is the prince-the second son of the king of the realm-and a cleric as second sons always are

Okay, I think I've got it!  Here's my paragraph (in outline form) for the story for book one. 

1.   A small farming town along the Dragonsjaw Mountains has a problem with a dragon.

2. Copper dragon is driven insane with cursed magical bracer and village hire a band of dragon killers to kill it.

3.  After removing the bracer, the band hunt down the Drow elves who snuck the bracer into the dragon’s lair-Airgid (the girl the copper dragon took in the village, who is actually a silver dragon) must turn herself into a dragon to keep band from getting killed, Tobann leaves because this freaks him out

4.  One of the drow in the town is the priestess who experimented on Tobann when he was a Drow slave.  She wants her slave back.  The Drow priestess hunting the hero catches the band and holds the heroine hostage to lure the hero back.

5.  The hero saves the girl and the band continues the quest to save the other metallic dragons after finding out that the dragon-girl’s clan is next.

Step One of the snowflake method

1. Write a one-sentence summary of your novel.

When I first started with this, my idea was a prince who was jealous of his older brother being king and wanted to take over the kingdom.  In order to do this, the prince made a pact with the red dragons to aid him in taking it over.

This was my sentence: A greedy second born prince tries to take over the kingdom by decimating the good dragons and thereby gaining the support of the evil red dragons.

As I started doing research on dragons and such, I ran across the Dungeons and Dragons wiki.  That of course had lots of information on dragons and magic and lots of the things I wanted to put into my book.  I started exploring the various lands of the forgotten realms and ran across a race of people called the Imaskari.  These humans were very advanced in magic, but they became too arrogant and their magic backfired.  Their magical creatures ended up attacking them and the Imaskari sealed themselves underground to survive.  

According to the history, the seal to the underground has opened and the Imaskari are venturing out.  I thought what a great story if they want to reestablish their old empire.  Perfect!

The Snowflake Method

I really like the snowflake method because it helps me get prepared for the story.  I feel like it's setting up a video game and then I get to play it when I put my characters in.  A lot of people have criticized this method because it spoils the fun of writing the book.  Maybe it will, I don't know.  So far I've been having a lot of fun planning-so much fun that after a few days I decided to blog about it.  As I progress through the steps, I'll write about how easy or hard it is, how fun or boring.

Here's a good little summary of the Snowflake method:

1. Write a one-sentence summary of your novel.

2. Expand the sentence to a paragraph describing the story narrative, any major events and the ending.

3. Now consider the main character and write a one page summary for each, considering the following points:

• A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline.
• The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?).
• The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?).
• The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?).
• The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?.
• A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline.

4. Go back to the summary you wrote in 2 and expand each sentence into a paragraph. Randy’s advice here is:

Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends. Source

5. Write a one page description for each major character, which tells the story from their point of view.

6. Expand your one page plot synopsis into a four page plot synopsis.

7. Expand your character descriptions from 3 into full ‘character charts’.

8. Using the expanded synopsis, make a list of every scene you will need to write to complete the novel.

9. Using the scene list, write a multi-paragraph narrative description of each scene.

10. Write your first draft.

This post is a summary of Ingermanson’s thinking and ideas. I strongly suggest that if you wish to apply the Snowflake Method that you go to Randy Ingermanson’s website to find more details.

From: http://bubblecow.co.uk/blog/2010/12/06/how-to-write-a-novel-the-snowflake-method/

What to write about

I really had no idea what to start writing about.  I wasn't even sure at first if I should write a fantasy novel.  I started perusing the internet searching for story ideas and then I found idea generators.  There's all sorts of generators-for characters, plots, weapons, sci-fi technology.  The list goes on and on.

I was looking for an idea that really grabbed my attention.  Soon I noticed the ones that got my attention were all fantasy related and that just reaffirmed my thinking that I should go with fantasy.  I stumbled across a story line suggestion about a dragon that had a cursed bracelet that was driving him insane and suddenly my imagination went wild.  Yes!  That's the one!  A flood of scenes and characters and ideas went pouring through my brain.  Still, what did I do with all these ideas?

I wanted to know how to organize my story, how to collect and focus my ideas and how to keep from getting stuck.  You see, I've written many books before this.  The problem always was that around page 50 or so I got bored.  The characters didn't seem to have anyplace to go and didn't know what to do.  What was the point?

I've since found out that my style of writing lumps me into the group of authors called "pantsers."  People who write by the seat of their pants.  I didn't want to be a pantser though-it never worked for me. I know it works for others, but not me.  So again I turned to google for my salvation.  I looked up plot development and writing a fantasy novel, hoping and praying to the gods of google that they would send me an answer.  And lo and behold they did!  The snowflake method.

The snowflake method is a step by step method of getting your story organized.  I'm tired right now so I'm not going to get into it too much, but in the next post I'll tell you all about it.

Starting my novel-Make a decision

I’ve decided to work on my first book-a dungeons and dragons style fantasy novel. I’m a good writer in my humble opinion and, having a doctorate in marital and family therapy, a good student of relationships and interactions. All my life everyone has said “Write books! Write books!” So I’ve decided what the heck, I’ll take the plunge.

I’ve recently finished the Robert Jordan series (well, except the very last book which hasn’t come out) and he is my hero. I want to be an author like him! I’ve always loved fantasy novels and so I thought that’s the kind I should try. Now writing a fantasy novel based on the Dungeons and Dragons game is NOT easy. Mostly because I’ve never played D&D. I know right? Crazy. My dad had lots of Dungeons and Dragons games and books when I was a kid and I used to pour over them. It was such as fascinating world of characters. Oh, and there was that book The Misenchanted Sword. I LOVED that book-not Dungeons and Dragons, but definitely fantasy.

Anyhow, so having decided to write a D&D style book I knew I had to start studying the D&D world, specifically Forgotten Realms. Wow! There is a ton of information out there. Who would have known that there was so much going on? There’s so many cities and cultures and religions and history! Just the research alone has taken me days and days and I still feel like I’m scratching the surface. I’m looking for a D&D game locally so I can get more of a flavor for how it all works and what the fantasy world is like.