TECH: A Survival Kit for Novelists?

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Writer's Digest, December 2006, pages 37-39, has an article by Jordan E. Rosenfeld with the title, "The Novelist's Survival Kit." Jordan starts out with the suggestion that novel writing is like entering a new relationship -- scary, exhilarating, insecure, worrisome. However, he also points out that the major difference is that you control your novel. You create characters and change them, you manipulate the circumstances and plot, you decide everything (do I hear the twilight zone introduction somewhere in the background? We control the horizontal and vertical... :-)

But you need to be prepared for the first draft being less-than-perfect. Just as you don't get acquainted with a person completely instantly, the first run through of a novel is likely to have some rough edges. So how do you set yourself up and keep going? Jordan suggests a survival kit, building blocks, killing your critic, and beating procrastination. Let's look at each of these.

Survival Kit. This is your collection of things that help you feel prepared for the journey and keep you on the path. It starts off with blind faith: "Faith that you have something important to say, that your competent and capable of writing a novel, and if you don't begin now, then when?" He suggest two notebooks -- one small and portable, for jotting down inspirations and notes. The second is larger, and stays at your work place. This is for all the other details. Timelines, character notes, etc. (Some of us might use an electronic version of this!) Next, a reward system. Design it yourself, make it something that you enjoy, and reward yourself for sitting down to write, for completing chunks, for getting things done. Finally, a schedule. Set up times to work, and take it seriously.

Building blocks. Jordan suggests that the key to your novel is two things. 1. Plot: "a sequence of events with consequences that happen to your characters." You might use the narrative arc -- complication, crisis, solution. Complication: set up problems for the characters. Then add consequences and actions. Finally, work to a resolution and close. 2. Characters. You have to have people. You might want to start with a short biographical sketch of the main characters -- what do they look like, what do they want, what are they afraid of?

Killing your critic. Insecurities and criticism are likely to make you stop writing. Don't do it. Set your own goals and responses to the doubts and procrastination and self-criticism.

Beat procrastination. Resistance, tomorrow would be better, and so forth are sneaky and subtle. Some tricks to avoid waiting:

• Reduce research. A little bit of research goes a long way, but letting yourself chase down just a little more information can keep you from ever starting. Write down the questions, do the research when you have to or during your scheduled research time, but keep writing.
• Revision is for second drafts. Trying to get it perfect before you go on often means you never go on. Plan on revising later, and right now get the first draft done.
• Scene blocking. Pick a number between three and 10. That's your horizon -- the number of chapters or perhaps scenes that you're going to look ahead while you're writing. You need to think ahead and write down basic details to string a plot, but you don't need to know every detail of every piece of the whole story. So lay out enough to reach your horizon, then write that much, and then repeat.
• Quantity over quality. Give yourself a word count goal.

And keep writing.

EXERCISE: The Coma

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Original Posting 15 May 2010

Writer's Digest, March April 2009, page 13, has an exercise excerpted from The 4 AM Breakthrough: Unconventional Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction by Brian Kiteley. Here's the exercise:

"Write from the point of view of a person in a coma. This is a permanent condition. The patient will probably never come out of the coma, but still haltingly comprehends the outer world. The voices of loved ones are familiar, even intimately familiar, but the comatose character cannot attach names to the voices. The patient has lost this capacity. 500 words."

"This is an exercise about death-in-life. The person who is telling the story is technically alive and is obviously narrating the tale for us -- to us -- but people in the room with him do not really know if the comatose person is alive or dead. This is also simply an exercise in sensory deprivation, like Plato's cave -- shadows thrown against the wall of a character's consciousness. The people in this piece will be barely human -- they'll be words, perhaps an odor, may be a dim memory evoked."

I have to admit, I find this a strange exercise. Yes, playing with exercising different senses makes sense to me (pun unintentional) but trying to force a story from the point of view of a person in a coma? And they're not going to recover, they don't recognize the voices they hear, why would I as a reader be interested in this? It seems like a purely literary exercise, and if you let yourself really think about being in that condition, I suspect it will be a very frustrating exercise, also. A character who cannot react or act, trying to understand the shadows impinging on them? I suppose you could draw a parallel with a baby, who also was faced with a blooming, buzzing confusion -- but at least the baby gets to grow up and start making sense out of it all. The character viewpoint here apparently doesn't have an opportunity to change.

Personally, I would prefer that you take some other limited sensory conditions. You might consider my friend who was profoundly colorblind, and enjoyed wearing lumberjack style flannel shirts -- bright bold plaids. I asked him, and he said everything was marked with a code, and he had asked trusted friends and family to tell him what went with what. Or perhaps the viewpoint of a dog, or maybe that cat? Feel free to pick your own.

In any case, write.