The antagonist: Hero or villain?

In many stories, the antagonist may even be more important than your main character. Your main character cannot become sympathetic without an opposing force.

The antagonist is more than just a bad guy who tries to stop the good guy. A good antagonist actually pushes the protagonist to action. The bad guy gives the good guy a reason to behave like a good guy. Because he is so important, your antagonist has to be every bit as real, every bit as well-rounded, as the protagonist.

The Antagonist is Evil

 No. The good antagonist is not evil. OK, he could be, but not for the mere sake of being evil. It's fun to write the bad guy who ties maidens to railroad tracks for fun, and throws the hero's One True Love on to the conveyor belt at the saw mill just because he can. The kind of bad guy who spends his time laughing maniacally while he twirls his 'stache. There's one secret, one thing you need to remember, if you want your antagonist to be truly interesting:

The antagonist honestly believes he is the good guy. Everything he does has a reason, and to him, those reasons are Right. They are Correct. They are Good.

Your good guy needs flaws and your antagonist needs positive characteristics. In some stories, the reader might even start to wonder just which character is the good guy and which is the bad guy. Few characters are as dull as the arch-villain who is evil just because being evil is evil. People aren't like that. Even people with a warped sense of reality (another little secret: we all have a warped sense of reality, shaped by our imperfect perceptions), do things for a reason. There are truly evil actions, and your bad guy might do some of them. But we humans have an almost unending supply of rationalizations for what we do.

A Rebel With a Cause

Your antagonist has his own character arc. Give your antagonist a cause. She wants to accomplish something, wants that more than anything else. And, like your protagonist, she is prepared to do what she has to do to achieve it, because that's what people do when something is of ultimate importance. Even a bad guy who wants to do something truly awful, like blow up a stadium full of innocent people, does it because he believes it has to be done to achieve the end result, which he believes to be for the ultimate good.  

• Sauron thought he was doing Middle Earth a favor by taking dominion.
• Saruman thought he was doing good by trying to stop the Black Lord and taking the power himself.
• Darth Vadar probably saw the Jedi as nefarious upstarts who wanted to thwart his plan to make the universe a better place.
  
  

A Hero in His Own Mind

The antagonist believes he's the hero. Your protagonist, who stands in his way, is the villain.

We are both nice people. The last cookie is sitting on the counter. You want it. I want it. Boom: conflict! In my story, you are now a villain because you want what I want.

My favorite example of this principle comes from politics. No matter what your political position is, your side is right and the other side is wrong. Maybe even evil. The thing is, the other side looks at you the same way. Why? Because each side believes it is right. If they were allowed to have their way, the world would be a spectacularly better place. It's the same with your hero and villain.  

Which one is the bad guy? Molly has a new puppy. This puppy is so naughty. When she takes it for walks, it pulls at the leash and tries to go its own way. It doesn't follow Molly's perfectly reasonable rules. When the puppy runs away, Molly is devastated. How could her puppy be so wicked? But what is the puppy doing, really? It's being true to its own puppiness. It doesn't understand Molly's unnatural rules. All she does is try to to restrain it and she scolds it for simply being what it is.

Let your reader sympathize with the villain, and understand why he wants what he wants, and maybe even see his point. If your reader can sympathize with both the hero and the villain, the conflict becomes more real, the stakes are raised, and your reader is more engaged.

Read More About It

• Writer's Digest: "6 Ways to Write Better Bad Guys" by Laura DiSilverio
• Writer's Digest: "3 Techniques For Crafting a Better Villain" by Hallie Ephron
• springhole.net: "Basic Tips To Write Better & More Despicable Villains"

7 tips for writing fiction even if you think you’re not a writer

When I mention that I write, I often hear responses like:

• I’d like to write a book but I don’t know where to start.
• I’d like to write, but I never have any good ideas.
• I could never be a writer. I’m not creative enough.

There’s nothing wrong with not writing if you’re not going to enjoy it. But if it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, go for it.

1. It only takes one idea.

Ideas are everywhere. Keep your eyes and ears open. Most people who write have folders and notebooks full of ideas, often too many for one lifetime, but you only need one. We find ideas in:

• Our real life
• The news
• The books we read
• Overheard conversations
• Travel

The smallest spark can become a story. When you see or hear something, ask yourself “what if?” What if that strange-looking person is really a ghost? What if Macbeth took place on a distant planet sometime in the future? What if those kids talking about their homework at Burger King were actually aliens sent to spy on their school?

2. Practice. Practice. Practice.

You wouldn’t expect to pick up a guitar or sit at a piano for the first time and immediately sound like a master. Writing, like all the arts, requires practice. The more you write, the better you get.

Here are some practice ideas:

• Look for writing prompts online. Several sites provide them.
• Write about anything. It doesn’t matter what.
• Work on one element of writing at a time.
• Write badly on purpose.

Give yourself permission to suck. Practice means taking baby steps. It means working through frustration. Being bored. Getting impatient. And always improving, even if you don’t notice the change, until one day something clicks.

3. Imitate your favorite writers.

Every writer begins by imitating the writers they like. It doesn’t matter if it borders on plagiarism. When you start, you’re writing for practice, not publication, so copy all you want. Write fan fiction. Copy style. It takes a lot of imitation before you start to develop your own voice.

4. Set reasonable expectations.

Don’t expect your first idea, no matter how excited you are about it, to be the Great American Novel. Start small and think small. Think in terms of a project, a story, or “that little thing I’m writing.” A book is a Big Thing, and it’s easy to intimidate yourself out of finishing, especially when the inevitable Inner Editor kicks in to remind you that you’re not good enough, and just who do you think you are anyway trying to write a book?

Few writers publish their first attempts. It’s incredibly difficult to get published, and we don’t all have what it takes to self-publish successfully. Fantasize about it all you want, but don’t expect it. Not yet.

Don’t expect greatness. Expect to entertain yourself. Expect to have fun. Expect to learn something. Expect it to take a long, long time. Expect to think you suck more than you do. Expect to think you’re even better than you are.

5. Read widely.

You don’t like romance novels? Read one anyway. It might help with a romantic scene you weren’t expecting to write. Read classics. Read current best sellers. Read history and science. Read about words. Read about writing. Read author biographies. Read true crime fiction. Just read.

It’s especially important to read in the genres and age groups you want to write, so you understand the elements of those kinds of stories. But don’t stop there.

You’ll generate ideas. You’ll understand how people work so you can make your characters more realistic. You’ll learn about the ways you never ever want to write.

6. Write.

If you want to write, you have to write. You’d be surprised how many “writers” try to skip this part.

Write for yourself  Write every day. If your life doesn’t allow you to write for an hour, write for fifteen minutes or ten. Give yourself permission to miss a day now and then so you don’t quit when you realize you’ve been so busy that a week has gone by since you last wrote.

7. Set a goal and persist until you reach it. 

Never give up. Start small. Your first goal should be to finish a paragraph, then a scene. Then the next one. Eventually you’ll have a story. Even if it’s no good, you wrote one. The vast majority of people who start writing a story never finish. Probably 95% or more. Finishing that first draft puts you in an elite company of writers. That’s something to be seriously proud of.

Pat yourself on the back. Throw a party. Take a break. Then start revising.

Enneagram: Create Characters Based on Personality Types

Today I’m going to show you how to use personality tests to flesh out the people in your stories. My favorite system for this is the Enneagram.

Image source: The Canadian Institute for Enneagram Studies

I’m not a fan of those quizzes in magazines or on websites that claim they can fit me into some narrow category that defines who I am. In general, I don’t trust anything that takes real people and shoves them into tight little cubbies. People are too complicated for that.

When I create fictional characters, however, these things can help me determine my characters’ desires and how they will act in the various situations they’ll face.

Discover how your characters tick

The Enneagram categorizes personalities into nine types:

Type	Role	Personality	Stress	Security
1	The Reformer	Rational, idealistic	4	7
2	The Helper	Caring, nurturing	8	4
3	The Achiever	Adaptable, success-oriented	9	6
4	The Individualist	Intuitive, reserved	2	1
5	The Investigator	Perceptive, cerebral	7	8
6	The Loyalist	Committed, security-oriented	3	9
7	The Enthusiast	Enthusiastic, productive	1	5
8	The Challenger	Powerful, aggressive	5	2
9	The Peacemaker	Easygoing, accommodating	6	3

I recommend doing an Enneagram quiz for your main characters. For your first test, answer for yourself so you can get an idea of the questions and how the test and the Enneagram works. Then, think about your characters and take the test for each of them.

The act of taking the quiz forces you to think about your character’s personality. This quiz is made up of 37 questions, with two possible answers for each. Before you take the quiz, spend some time thinking about your character so you’re not just making stuff up as you answer the questions.

Hint: At the end of the quiz, I suggest printing the page before you click to calculate the results. Then you can go back and look at how you answered the questions. Include the printed quiz in your character profile.

Deepen your characters

For a character to seem real, he or she has to react to situations in a way that is consistent with his or her personality. And, because certain character types naturally conflict, pairing a protagonist and antagonist with clashing personality types creates the tension you need for a successful story.

What I like about this system is that it doesn’t say a person is one type and that’s it. It assigns a number value that shows how firmly a person fits into each type. In other words, it acknowledges a challenger might be a peacemaker as well as a reformer, with strong individualist tendencies. It also defines which types bring either comfort or stress to each type.

I took the test for one of my characters and got these scores:

Type 1: Reformer	2
Type 2: Helper	8
Type 3: Achiever	3
Type 4: Individualist	5
Type 5: Investigator	2
Type 6: Loyalist	6
Type 7: Enthusiast	4
Type 8: Challenger	3
Type 9: Peacemaker	3

This tells me Aellin is primarily a Helper, with strong Loyalist tendencies. She is not a Reformer or an Investigator.

So what could I do with this character? As the first table above shows, a Helper is stressed by a Challenger, Aellin obviously needs to be pitted against a powerful authority figure. Her sidekick should be an Individualist, because a 2 is comforted by a 4. And Aellin should be forced into a situation where she needs to be an Investigator. Maybe she needs to plot revenge against the leader. As it turns out, this is a major part of the story I’ve come up with, so the test tells me I’m on the right track.

Why does the test tell me that? Well, if Aellin is clearly not an Investigator, then having to become one means that there will be conflict, not only against her powerful enemy, but also internal conflict with herself as she is forced to act in a way that is unnatural for her. She’ll revert to her natural personality, which works against what she has to do. She’ll struggle constantly to achieve her goal because she’s fighting against her own nature.

Wash, rinse, repeat

As legendary editor Sol Stein said, each character needs to have his own script. So, if I take the same quiz for each major character in my story, I’ll get a good idea of their inner and outer conflicts, and how they’ll react to various situations. I’ll create characters with their own consistent lives, and I’ll see how to create personality conflicts.

Learn more about it

The Enneagram is a complicated system. I’ve presented a simplified explanation. You don’t have to understand everything about it to create strong characters. If you want to know more, I suggest starting with the Wikipedia article. For an even deeper dive, I recommend9types.com or The Enneagram Institute, where you can learn more about the personality types and find additional tests.

Creating Reality in a Fictional Setting

Use available resources to create an imaginary place as real any you can actually find.

One of the fun elements of fiction writing is creating a setting and bringing it to life. When creating a setting for your story, you have three choices:

1. Use a real place.
2. Create a fictional place.
3. Create a fictional place based on a real place.

I wanted to set my story, The Secret of Eucalyptus Cove, in a place I know well enough to satisfy the Writer’s Digest list of setting elements.

I knew I wanted Eucalyptus Cove to be a small, somewhat isolated ranch on the San Mateo County coast in California, near Half Moon Bay. It’s not far from where I grew up, and is the section of coast where I spent countless hours. I know it physically, sensorily, and culturally.

Because I could not find a place exactly like I needed for my story, I created a composite of several places. Between my memory, my imagination, and the magic of Google, I was able to create a setting as real to me as any actual place.

There are several farms and ranches in the area, and I knew how I wanted Eucalyptus Cove to look.

I wanted my ranch to be above a small, secluded beach. The part of the coast that I selected has countless little coves, many of them almost inaccessible at the bottom of cliffs. I combined my own memories of the coast with the pictures below to create exactly what I needed.

 

Once I had my location, I needed a farmhouse. For this, I drew on the Patterson house just across the city limits from my home town. It’s not right on the coast, but it’s not that far. It’s easy enough to move a house in fiction.

I took the house, transported it to my fictional ranch above the cove, and modified it a bit based on other homes of the type and in the area, such as the Meek mansion, whose tower became an important part of my farm house.

Like ranches everywhere, Eucalyptus Cove needed a compound of sheds, barns, and other out buildings. Something like the one on the left below, which also happens to have a beach and eucalyptus trees, combined with the typical coastal ranch on the right:

 

I also needed the ranch to have some history, so I placed an older house on the ranch, an adobe home from the days when it was a Mexican rancho. I based the adobe on several in the San Francisco Bay Area and surroundings.

 

Finally, of course, Eucalyptus Cove needed a eucalyptus grove. There are groves all along the coast. The one I drew from was the one on the edge of my home town. As kids, we referred to this grove as Hobo Jungle, a place of many legends and secrets. And a place that, sadly, is now only a fragment of what it once was. Fortunately, there are enough similar groves that I could find pictures to trigger my sensory memories.

 

I know from experience what a Eucalyptus grove smells like and how the peeled bark, seed pods, and other plant litter looks and feels under foot.

I’ve used Hobo Jungle and the Patterson house before, in a poem I wrote many years ago. Here’s part of it:

Us kids passed that grove on Jarvis
eucalyptus stretched to Union City
trunks striped with peeling bark
the odor of Dad’s cough drops

Deer, fox, rabbit, coyote
Pat heard there were bears
they like eucalyptus he said
A farmhouse, deserted, rotting
a haunted hotel for jungle hobos
Juan said. We laughed, stayed away

With all the pieces assembled in my mind and in my files, it was time to imagine how my characters would interact with the place I created.

(Note: None of the pictures in this post are mine. I collected them too long ago and didn’t expect to use them in a blog, so I didn’t keep track of my sources. Thanks to the original photographers for helping enhance my imagination.)

Deep Philosophical Moment: Writing Is Like Life

Writing is like life.

I don't mean that what you write is a reflection of life, or that writing means that you give life to ideas and make-believe people, or even that writing makes you feel alive, although all of that is true.

I mean writing is like life. You start out with goals and plans. Whether you're a planner or a pantser, in writing or in life, you have some idea of what you want to make out of  your story, and you work to achieve it.

And, despite the planning and lists of goals and hard work, as with those best-laid plans of mice and men, no matter how much you work toward your goal, you end up somewhere you didn't completely expect. Stuff happened in the process of making your story. You met a character you didn't expect to meet. You got hurt or frightened and reacted by backing away, or by running blindly down the nearest alley. You took one turn to explore a road that looked interesting, expecting to get back on your path at the next corner. Your intended plot was blocked by some obstacle and so you had no choice but to look in another direction. The bumps and twists and attempts to work around obstacles and respond to conflicts led you in an unexpected direction.

You let go of the rod. You didn't stay on the Yellow Brick Road. Your story forced you to slog down the Muddymuck Swamp Gas Trail, and you probably forgot to roll up your pant legs until it was too late.

And you ended up here. You look back, wondering what would have happened if you had stuck to your plan. Would things be better? Worse? Or just different?

But your story is what it became, intentional or not. Maybe you just hoped for the wrong tale, and got what you got. And chances are, it's a pretty good story the way it ended up, even if it's not what you always wanted.

Yeah, it's kinda like life that way.

Getchyer NaNo On

It’s time to get your NaNoWriMo on. I know, I know, it’s still early and you’re busy with other projects. But it’s out there, lurking, and the best way to succeed is to hit the ground running come November one.

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is the annual National Novel Writing Month in which you write a book, start to finish. You can sign up and report your daily totals and, if you reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, you win the right to print a certificate saying you won. For a few bucks, you can even buy the t-shirt that shows the world your writing prowess.

The format of the event is a great exercise for developing writers. The goal is to produce words, 1700 of them a day. I especially like booting that naggy internal editor guy out the door for the entirety of November. It is a freeing feeling to write, write, write without having to perfect every sentence and phrase. You just blast out a book in 30 days. There will be time later to clean up. Besides, it’s only the first draft. It’s you telling you the story. Who knows what crazy paths it’s going to take? NaNoWriMo is all about putting a rough book on paper, not about perfecting it.

I’ve participated in three of them and won last year for the first time. Naturally then, I’m an expert on NaNo. The key is planning. My failed attempts started with a story idea - more of a story beginning. Being a panster at the time, writing from the seat of my pants, I figured I’d work out the details as I went ahead. You know, minor things like plot, characterization, etc. -  they’ll come as the story develops. There’s nothing more frustrating than moving along smoothly only to ground to a halt two weeks into it.

Last year, I spent October debating whether to do it or not. I was in the middle of several projects and didn’t want to start something else. Plus I didn’t have a clue for a story. Finally, a week before November, I sat and kicked around some ideas and managed to come up with something which was surprisingly good. But it was more than just a concept. The secret to success was knowing how it ended. By looking all the way to the end, it’s easier to plan the story to that objective. With the end goal in mind, even a pantser could wear the NaNo shirt in December.

So, now’s the time. Decide if you can commit to a month-long writing marathon. If you can, re-visit some of those story ideas you’ve put on the back burner and figure out how it is going to turn out. Then, either plan if that’s your style, or be ready with the end goal in mind and on November 1^st, kick some writing butt. 

The Well-Appointed Writing Space

To write well, you don't need much equipment. An inexpensive pen or pencil and enough paper to hold whatever you are writing, and you're good. However, the modern writer, if he hopes to publish, needs a little more. Today, I'm going to write a little about my writing space.

I love my writing space. I want to be in here. Loving that space is important, considering how much time I spend in here. I work from home most of the time in my day job, and this is my writing retreat for my creative time. I call my space my Schreibwinkl, or writing nook, and I've set it up to be a kind of refuge, which is not necessarily how we usually think of a work area. But if I'm going to spend a lot of time here, I want it to be comfortable, have what I need, and most importantly. be pleasant enough that I want to spend time in my room.

We all have a different writing space. Some write on the kitchen table, or a small desk in the corner. I'm lucky enough to have a room of my own. It's a small room, about 9x10 feet, which presents some challenges when making the room both functional and welcoming.

A shelf with books and toys can help personalize a room while being functional

No matter how big your space is, personalizing it makes it more comfortable. I need my own space, so making this little room my own is important to me. When I moved into this room, it had basic dark brown carpet and brown 1980s paneling on the walls and fluorescent tube ceiling lights. I lived with that for a while, but I got tired of somebody else's decor, especially since it was dark and dreary. I tore down the paneling (and discovered unfinished drywall with huge gaps behind it. I finished the walls, painted, and replaced the light fixture with bulbs on a dimmer switch. I gave one wall a half-timbered look, as close as I could come to the real thing because I've spent a lot of time in Germany and Austria, and enjoy medieval stuff, and I enjoy the kind of rough, rustic look I created. This summer, I finally pulled the carpet and replaced it with durable vinyl planking that looks like wood. Real wood would have been nicer, but I roll my chair all over the place, so I need something that won't easily scratch. Some people might hate this decorating style, but that's OK. It's me, and it's comfortable. You'll want to do your space your own way.

All of that's great, but this room is for working, and I need it to be a workspace, not just a place where I escape and hide out. For me, that means this is a TV-free room--but with plenty of music, thanks to a sizeable hard drive and decent-enough speakers--and it has plenty of work surfaces.

I have two desks. One is a large corner desk with my personal computer and lots of empty surface space where I can lay out notes or tablets or whatever I need at the moment.

Where the magic happens: the computer where I do much of my writing

The other is an old, small, inexpensive wooden kitchen table, just big enough for the laptop and two monitors I need for my day job.

Most of my day job duties are performed on an old table

And, being me, I also need plenty of technical gadgetry to improve efficiency and help me overcome my natural tendency toward clutter and disorganization. This is where Amazon has been useful.

For example, I have several tablets and other gadgets that I use as part of work and writing life. All of these gadgets need to be plugged in and charged, and that creates a spaghetti of tangled cords that takes up space and does little to add to the comfort of the room. So, I bought a 6-port USB charger that only requires one power outlet but can charge six devices at once.

Organizing cables makes the desk less cluttered

To further reduce the tangle of cords, I bought a pack of ten 7.5" microUSB cables. These cables replace many of my longer cables, and look about as attractive as you can make a cable look. For non-microUSB cables, like the one for my iPad, a simple twist tie helps keep the cable from taking over my desk.

Also, because I always manage to run out of USB ports, I found a monitor stand that has four easy-to-access ports right on the front, and allows me to tuck my keyboard away when I need empty desk space.

My monitor stand helps me free up desk space when I need it, and provides
handy USB ports and a headphone jack

Finally, because this is meant to be a creative space, I have little inspiration things wherever I look. Like my Goats In Trees calendar (hey, we're all inspired by different things) and objects that encourage me to be creative.

I've scattered objects around the room that remind me why I'm here

These are just a few of the things in my Schreibwinkl that help me make it my own and maximize my small space. Everything in the room is meant to facilitate work, make me feel creative, help solve my tendency toward clutter and disorganization, or help me enjoy being in the room. Writing takes a lot of time, and I need a space that is all mine, decorated my way (for better or worse), and makes me prefer to be in here doing what I need to do rather than Out There doing all the other things that compete for my time. Without this personal space that I enjoy, it would be difficult to keep my butt in my chair for the number of hours needed to live the writing life. 

Benefits of Writing Groups

It took me a long time to get into a writing group. For too many years, I relied on the feedback of my friends and family who, as much as I love them, know little to nothing about writing and even less about critiquing. For a long time, part of me was scared of what an honest, qualified critique of my writing would bring. But now, I’ve seen that what it does bring is great improvement to my writing as I’m forced to face the hard facts of what I need to fix and what I need to cut, and as I’m motivated to keep going by other people who are in the same boat as me.  

So here’s what I’ve learned about the benefits of a small, consistent writing group:

1. They get used to your style and start catching the mistakes you consistently make.

2.  You get used to their style of critiquing and start to know exactly who to go to for the questions you have and the problems you can’t figure out how to solve in your writing.

3.  They know how many versions of your story you’ve gone through and what the old versions looked like and they can appreciate and celebrate with you the improvements you’ve made as you’ve gone along. 

4. They also celebrate with you when you achieve any level of success in your writing.

5. You can commiserate together over the struggles of writing and talk about how you get past resistance and writer’s block, etc.

6. After a fun meeting with them, you feel energized and excited about writing. It doesn’t feel quite a lonely as it did before. 

Trello for Writers: Using Templates in a Project

Trello is as flexible as you need it to be. The way you set up your project really depends on the way you work. In this tutorial, I'll assume that one story or book is one project. I'll also assume that you've set up template cards as shown in a previous tutorial.If you haven't set up template cards, it's no big deal. Those templates make it so you don't have to re-create similar cards for each character, for example, or for each scene.

Create Project

In the previous tutorial, we created a Trello board to hold our templates. Because we want to be able to use those templates in multiple projects, we don't want to use that same board as our project board, so we'll create a new one.

1. Open Trello.
2. From your Boards menu or on the Boards screen, click Create New Board.
3. Name the board. For this example, I'm calling the board for my project "Jack and Jill."

Create Lists

A story consists of several elements. For my Jack and Jill story planning, I want to create lists called Characters, Settings, and Scenes. Eventually I'll create another list to track submissions, but let's not get ahead of our selves.

On your new project Trello board, create a list called Characters. Conveniently, there's already a box to help you create your first list. Just type "Characters" and click Save. A new box automatically pops up for the next list, so call it "Settings," then do this one more time for Scenes."

Copy Templates to Project

The next thing we need to do is copy cards from our Templates board to our project board.

From the Boards menu, pick your Templates board. Next, click your Character template card, then click Copy.

Change the Title field to your character's name. Then, in the Board field, select your story project, and select the Characters list. Then click Create Card. This creates the card based on the template and puts in the right place. If you switch back to your project board, you'ss see the character card you just created in your Characters list.

Repeat this for each template you want to copy. Remember to set the name, board and list for each card. But if you forget, it's no problem. You can easily change all of that stuff later.

Edit Cards

Once the cards are where you want them,you can edit them.

For example, my Character card includes a comment with some basic info about thecaracter. In the template, I just have headings for the info, but I can go into the card and add the details now that it is is in my project.

Next Steps

That's most of the basics for creating your project and starting to plan your story. Next we'll go into some deeper information, like using Trello to manage actual writing.

How to Get Motivated to Edit

At LDStorymakers this last May, my favorite workshop I attended was by the woman who actually put on the conference this year—Melanie Jacobsen. She talked all about how she makes herself be productive in her writing no matter how busy she is. It was really great and practical, and I came away ready to apply everything she said.

I didn’t. Part of my problem is I’m not actually in the writing stage I’m in the editing stage. I found myself wanting a follow-up class about how I can make sure I am productive in editing/rewriting, which in some ways is a whole different beast than writing your first draft.

Here are the ways I’ve applied some of her advice and also figured out my own:

1.       Have and update your outline. I’m a total pantser. All the way, 100%. But, even the most hard-core pantser needs to create an outline as they are writing the rough draft, and then update that as you edit. Otherwise you get soooo lost. And have no idea what’s going on. And your story will make no sense. Basically, organization has to kick in at some point. It’s still flexible. You can still change things whenever you want. You just need some way to keep track of what you’re doing and what needs to be fixed as you edit.

2.       Schedule time to write. This is basic, but I keep forgetting it all the time. I think I’ll just want to write, it will just happen magically because I’ll feel so inspired. But most of the time, I have to schedule it and I have to make an annoying reminder to beep at me in my phone over and over before I’ll actually get myself to write/edit consistently. Because it is a thousand times easier to write today when you’ve already written yesterday. Momentum is a big deal. Plus, I’m so Type A that I’m obsessed with checking things off my list—so if I put writing on my list every single day, I’m more likely to do it so I can check it off. And then I feel so good and productive that I want to do it again tomorrow. It works.  

3.       Write a blurb of what you’re going to write tomorrow. This is the one thing from Melanie’s presentation that I’ve actually been applying. It’s so helpful. Everyday once I’m done writing, I write a paragraph or so about what I’m going to write about tomorrow. Sometimes dialogue starts coming to me and I write it down. Sometimes I end up writing a whole page. Whatever, that’s great. That means I’ve already got the inspiration going for the next day without putting the pressure on myself for it to be “perfect” like I do when I sit down and write for real. If I’m not totally rewriting a scene but just editing it a little, I write down exactly what I need to go through and edit for. Then the next day I know exactly what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, and that makes it easier to start—especially since sometimes rewriting something can seem more overwhelming that writing it in the first place.

4.       Stop worrying about it being perfect. This relates to a point I just brought up in the last one. When you’re on your third or fourth or tenth draft, but you’re writing a whole new scene that you’re adding in or basically completely redoing a scene that was there before, you’re basically back in rough draft land for that scene and that can be frustrating. Because you’ve already gone over this thing how many times now? But it’s OK. It still doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s never going to be perfect. It just needs to be written and then you can look at it later and then show it to your critique group and clean it up. For the millionth time. I used to think that just writing a novel took patience. I’ve realized that’s nothing compared to the patience it takes to edit a novel. And I’m not even close to done. Sigh. Patience.

And all those things have helped me to be much more productive lately, which is great.

Trello for Writers, Part 2: Templates

If you use Trello to manage your writing projects, you might find it useful to create cards that you can use for multiple cards.

STEP 1: Create a "Templates" Board

Let's start by creating a Trello board where you can keep the cards you want to reuse. Open up Trello and click Create new board. Give the new board a title, such as "Templates," and click Create.

That's it. That was easy enough, right? You now have an empty board, waiting for your cards.

STEP 2: Create a List

Now that your board is ready, it's just sitting there empty. An empty bulletin board isn't particularly useful unless you pin something to it, and the same is true of your Trello board. Unlike the blank slate of a bulletin board, though, Trello expects you organize your cards in lists. The kinds of lists you create on your template board depend on the types of templates you want to keep there. For this demo, let's keep it simple. You can always take what you learn and get fancy later. Let's create a single list.

That's easy enough. Turns out, your board is not exactly empty. Turns out there's a box waiting for you, where you can type a name for your first list. Let's call it "Novel Cards."

Click Save (or just hit Enter) and you'll have a list, ready for your cards.

Step 3: Create Cards

Your cards can be anything you want, but because we're keeping it simple for this demo, let's go with something high level, like the following:

• Character
• Scene
• Setting
• Submission

In your new list, click Add a card, then type the name of the card, "Character," Hit Enter, and type "Scene. Continue this process until you've created all four cards.

Step 4: Add Details

The point of these cards is to contain information that you want to reuse, so we'll need to add some details. Think about the details carefully, so you add what you want and don't have to go back and make changes.

Click one of the cards, and create a comment with the outline of the details you want. Remember, that hitting enter will save the current comment and create a new one. This is good if you want each characteristic to be its own comment, where you can add more details. If you prefer a lighter card, press Ctrl+Enter to move down a line in the current comment.

For example, for the Character card, you might want details like name, age, birthday, best friend, address, appearance characteristics, personally traits, and so on. What you include and the amount of detail depends on your preferences. Click outside the card to close it, then click on the next card.

For scene, you might want a name, summary, goal, characters present, conflict, resolution, and maybe a sequel if you write using the scene and sequel method. 

Do this for each or your cards, adding the types of information you are likely to want in each project. Once you copy the card to a project (we'll do that in another lesson) you can always edit the card to add any project-specific info that you don't necessarily need in a template, such as whether your character is on Team Zombie or Team Pirate.

Next Steps

As you can see, Trello is flexible enough to adapt to your style and preferences. 

After you've created your templates, we'll copy the template cards into a project and look at how to use them to plan your story.