Do You Need A Calendar?

Sorry about no post on Friday. I promise I didn't forget you, my lovelies, but I was out of town Thursday and Friday in a place where I had no Internet access, and I hadn't scheduled my post to come out.

In other news, I'm working on something new (so new it doesn't even have an official title), and I've hit a snag.

My times are off.

This is a new one for me, but for some reason, things are not unfolding in chronological order. My Male Lead and Female Lead are in different places and thus are following their own threads for quite a while. Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how or when this occurred, my Male Lead Thread got three days ahead of my Female Lead Thread, so every time I move back to my Female Lead, I'm always backing up a bit.

How big a sin is this?

I know I'm not alone in non-linear or nonchronistic stories. Lord of the Rings gets straightened our and put in chronological order for the movies, but most of the books follows one set for a considerable ways and then jumps back to the same point to follow the other set for a while.

But they follow the same set for an extended period, and they pick of at the same point. I'm not quite doing that.

My only thoughts right now are that I'll figure out how off it can be for others when I pass this one out to betas. Until then, I'll go with my gut and keep the nonchronisitic order.

How about you? Do you always follow a chronological order? How do you manage multiple threads?

Location, Location, Location

When I'm writing, I try not to scamper off aimlessly. I try to have some sort of advance plan for a scene before diving into it so that I don't send my characters footling around through space. But, well, sometimes they go where my fingers take them without my quite knowing.

Yesterday, as my character footled around, because I was a tad short on plans for that scene, she passed through the garden -- because Amira loves gardens, apparently -- and found herself in the library where she finally got around to running into that character I wanted her to run into. Then, as they were about to leave the library, something occurred to me, "I've just introduced the library. I can use that later!" That made me very happy.

I think on some level I would prefer to limit the number of settings I use in my book. Maybe it's because I don't want to confuse the reader by tossing in a lot of rooms and places that aren't important for them to remember. Maybe I don't want to keep track. Maybe it's the theater.

I tend to create stories similar to the way plays are created. In a play, there cannot be too many settings, because there is not room for many sets. The wings would fill up with the periaktoi or flats or whatever else you're using for your sets, and then there wouldn't be room for actors and actresses, and then you've got a problem with your play as there's no one to perform it. So, maybe the manner in which I tell a story has been impacted by the time I've spent working in theater.

But, regardless of the cause, I think it's true that I tend to limit the number of settings I use.

Anyway, since I've introduced the library as a setting, it now means that I can go back to it in other scenes. I can say, "Hey, remember that time Amira was in that place with that one person. Well, now these other people are there doing this thing. So you don't need to get distracted by the walls, just go look at the thing. No, seriously, go look at the thing. It's interesting, I promise." It will save me the trouble of introducing a new place to the reader, and it will save the reader the trouble of having to remember another location.

So, now I can add the library to my list. This makes me very happy indeed.

Do you like to use a lot of settings? Are you very specific about where your scenes take place?

First Draft Happy

Okay, I have a confession to make. About a week or so ago, I was tired. Not body tired. Brain tired. Heart tired. All the spark had gone out of the writing for me, and I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing it anymore. I felt like the rewriting process was sapping my will to write. (Forgive the emo-sounding-ness there. I'm sleepy as I type this. That makes me sound emo sometimes.)

But, on Friday, I decided to shove all the other stuff that had been on the front burner onto a back burner. It could wait. I was going to bend to temptation and start writing something new. And I feel better. I feel great.

The creative juices are flowing again. I'm thinking again, feeling again, discovering new characters again, finding a new world again. It feels good to sit down with a story-problem again and figure it out instead of rooting through my notes to remember what the official answer is in accordance with the rest of the plot.

Yesterday, I sat down and sketched a rough family tree for four characters. Yesterday, I figured out that my MC didn't look anything like I'd originally thought she did. Yesterday, I got to call my villain a "total pretender to the throne" and know why that was an accurate description of him. I'm learning about my story again. I'm having fun with my story again.

To blatantly steal a line from Jack in the Shutterbox, something is right with my world and I'm loving it.

In the comments of my previous post, D.L. Hammons referred to my rough drafting right now as my happy place. I think that's the accurate. Because first drafts, I've found, always make me really happy.

Now, to blatantly steal a line from a Disney World ride that scared the living daylights out of me when the talking vulture automaton said it: Everyone has a happy place. Maybe this is yours.

Yep, this might be mine. What's yours?

There Is No Future, Only the Past

I know that title probably sounds depressing, but it isn't. At least, not for me. I cribbed an old quote by O'Neill, "There is no present or future, just the past happening over and over again." Well, the truthfulness of that in regards to historical events, I will not debate at this moment. But, I must say, from what I've seen, in stories, at least, it's true.

Don't believe me?

Scenario #1: A young couple from waring families falls in love and must struggle to be together against seemingly impossible odds.

Obviously, I mean Romeo and Juliet. Except I really meant the myth about Pyramus and Thisbe. Or did I mean Troilous and Cressida? No, wait, I was thinking of The Wicked Books by Holder and Viguie.

Scenario #2: Pretty, spirited young miss becomes involved with a slightly older, highly attractive man, and through her love saves him from his dark past.

I'm not even going to play with you on this one. That's the plot of about a million romances whose names I couldn't even begin to list. And Twilight. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

So, this brings about the old question, what constitutes new and original anyway? For most stories, I'm sure there's something there that, when stripped to the bones, is really something we've all seen before.

But, for me, that's the key. You've got to strip it to the bones to see that. There should be enough new and interesting meat on the bones that it distinguishes itself from others of its kind.

Bear with me on what could be a disturbing metaphor, okay?

Human skeletons, by and large, look a lot alike. (Not that I've seen a bunch up close or anything like. I'm generalizing.) If you look at pictures of different human skulls, you'll always know, 'Hey, that's a human skull.' And, if I showed you five skeletons, you'd probably need a while to find the two that were exactly alike. (Ooh, an interesting, but slightly creepy, game to play at Halloween parties.)

But, not all people look alike. We're not even shaped alike, for all we've got similar bones. Some bones are longer some people. Some people have more muscles in certain areas. Our hair and eyes and all the little details come in different dimensions and colors. The details change.

It's the same with stories. To make an old story new, change things up. Elongate some bones and shrink others (change the basic framework to shift the focus to another aspect of the tale). Redistribute the muscle groups (change some big aspect, like POV or time and place, which can do a lot). Replace the hair and eyes (make the minor details way different. You can change the MCs personality and end up with a whole different seeming story.)

The past is happening over and over again. Why don't we always feel like it? Because it's a different looking history every time.

How do you feel about story repetition? Are these all just the same old story over and over again? What do you do to make your stories original?