Too Much to Chew?

Filed Under Blogging, Planning, Tales from the Author's Desk | Leave a Comment

I clearly must love to be able to tell people “no, I can’t, I’m busy,” because I keep signing up for various writer things!

First, of course, is the Platform-Building Campaign. I love all the writers I’m meeting but good lord, there are so many of you! I read your posts, but I have to get better at commenting on them. Comments are near and dear to my heart, so I bet they are to yours too.

Earlier this week, I signed up for A Round of Words in 80 Days (or ROW80 for short). It’s like NaNoWriMo, but for more days and you get to set your own goals. I like how NaNo holds you accountable and provides you with a huge support group, but 50,000 words in November? I have only won that once, and it was because I didn’t have school or a job at the time. And this year I have both! So I’m going to set more manageable goals, like 750 words a day, which I chose because…

I joined 750 Words! It’s all about the rewards program. For writing 750 words a day for a certain number of days, you get a new badge. The penguin, for example, is what you get for 5 consecutive days, and I’ll have that Sunday if I keep it up! I am very reward motivated, but it doesn’t work when I give myself the reward. So I’m letting 750 Words do it for me!

Have you signed up for either of these? How do you keep yourself accountable to your writing?

Planning vs. Doing

Filed Under NaNoWriMo, Planning | Leave a Comment

I suffer from a fatal flaw. I am a Planner. I cannot stop planning, no matter how much planning I have already done. And it doesn’t help that I find it far easier to plan than to do.

How else do you explain why I have so many ideas for stories and so few finished ones?

Writers cannot just be Planners. We also have to be Doers. If only there was a switch we could flip – but there isn’t.

Even writing this, I’m tempted to form a plan on how to become a Doer. Which pretty much sums up my problem.

NaNoWriMo is a good remedy for this. They encourage you do Do for a whole month, and give you no good time to Plan. It’s a good system. That’s why my friends and I came up with LoNoWriMo. You can see how much progress I’ve made in just the past week!

Are you a Planner or a Doer? How do you manage the other side of the coin?

Winners Are Boring

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You’ll probably want your main characters to win – eventually. But if they win every battle, every contest, every parlor game, your readers are going to be very very bored.

One of the problems with Mary Sues is that they are perfect – and win everything. I know you don’t want to write Mary Sues. So let’s remember this, shall we?

In my first two drafts of Narrator, I made my characters too successful. They certainly didn’t win every battle, but their plans worked out more often than not. There was probably tension and suspense and all that in those scenes, but definitely not as much as there could be.

For example, Calder and gang get taken prisoner and stuffed in a basement until they can be killed. One of them picks the lock, they all bust out, and quickly take down the bad guys.

In the third draft, I’m changing this. They won’t be able to pick the lock, or bust out. Instead, they’ll be marched to their execution, and one of them is going to be a knife-prick away from dying.

Much headier stuff. Compared to this, that first scene is just plain boring.

So which do you want to write? Constant winners, or those who only win when it counts (and sometimes not even then)?

Experimental Planning Method: Results

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Well that was a bust.

Don’t get me wrong, I came up with lots of lantern scenes, but my novel’s plot is so complex, putting those scenes in order didn’t really point out how to use other scenes to tie it together. After shuffling index cards around for hours, I was no closer toward a decent outline.

I think this method would work for a short story, or a simple-plotted novel. But for me? No.

Do you guys have any planning secrets to share?

Write Only Lantern Scenes

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The lantern scene from Tangled

These types of scenes go by different names. Holly Lisle calls them candy bar scenes, Alexandra Sokoloff calls them setpieces – and I’ve decided to call them Lantern Scenes, thanks to Tangled. Don’t freak out, you already know what they are: those scenes that make up the meat of your story, the ones that are delicious to write or read.

When I saw Tangled, I had just learned about candy bar scenes. And as soon as the first lantern floated into the air, I knew that this was one of those scenes.

Now I bet that you or one of your writer friends has said, at some point in their writing career, “I can’t wait to finish this boring stuff and get to the interesting part!”

Stop. Think about what that means. If you find your story boring, how on earth is your reader going to feel?

The solution: write only lantern scenes.

Obviously this isn’t practical. Not every scene will be a joy to write. (Heck, J. K. Rowling was crying at the end of Deathly Hallows.) But you can plan out a number of lantern scenes, and find ways to string them together with scenes that are more than transitions, that build up to the next lantern scene.

I’ve already made a huge long list of lantern scenes I want to do for Fragment of the Moon. I don’t yet know what order to put them in, or how to connect them. There’s certainly a lot of conflict to account for. I think index cards will help.

Come back Friday to see the results of my experimental method!

The Problem with Pantsing

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Welcome to A Single Bell’s Planning Week! Inspired by Holly Lisle’s Professional Plot Outline Mini Course, I’ve decided to attempt a new method of plotting for Fragment of the Moon, which is simply too complicated to write by my pants.

Now I’m sure there are some authors out there who excel at pantsing. A novel comes out almost fully formed, from start to finish. But as I’m learning through my Narrator revisions, that is not the case for me.

I usually get great ideas from actually writing, but it’s all too easy to get caught up in one train of plot and forget to see all of the options I have. It’s racing along head-first, without an eye on the bigger picture.

Planning, however, allows you to map out different aspects before you waste time on unneeded scenes. With a step back, you can see different ways to maximize conflict. During my short break from my latest Narrator revision, my mind has been brimming with ways to tweak scenes or character arcs, to squeeze as much out of my premise as I possibly can. If only I had gotten those ideas before.

In order to streamline the writing of Fragment of the Moon, I’ve decided to try a new method. Come back Wednesday to read about my new plan for planning!

  • Welcome

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    Hi, I'm Jenn, new grad student and old YA fantasy writer. I've long dreamed of being a novelist, and I bet you have too. I hope you find my blog helpful, inspiring, and maybe just a little bit fun. (But not too much fun. Writing is serious business, you know.)

    You can follow me on Twitter or Facebook, or email me at:
    jennifer.a.johnson7 at gmail dot com

  • Official Progress


    4/21 segments

    A narrator hijacks a cliche fantasy story, much to the chagrin of its characters.

    Status: Second revision



    1,639/70,000 words
    A young noblewoman with strange powers must choose: her king or her soul.

    Status: First draft



    1,087/70,000 words
    When a girl's heart is stolen, she's plunged into a world of magic and shadows - but can she get her heart back before she loses it completely?

    Status: First draft





  • All writing, unless otherwise specified, is the property of
    Jennifer Johnson © 2010