Novel Writing - Day 10
June 9, 2008
Just four more days left dedicated to research for the first novel I’m outlining for this project. My goal for tomorrow is to take some of the simple background research I’ve done and start attaching highlighted pages and note cards to my character sheets, setting sketches, etc. I’ll also be going through some of the other worksheets in the First Draft in 30 Days book and filling them out as appropriate before delving a bit deeper in following days into some of the primary research issues for the book.
I’ve also determined that I still need to add one or two significant subplots. I’m toying with a few new ideas (in addition to those I added a few days ago), but haven’t set anything in stone yet. The novel falls within the horror genre and, while I won’t resort to gratuitous sex and violence for the purpose, I really need to add a little je ne sais quoi to up the intensity at parts. I think new subplots can help me address this, while also forwarding an angle I’m including for the purpose of making the story carry some series potential. I think not knowing what my characters are going to do fully is really half the fun of this.
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All Book Marketing is a blog on book marketing and book publicity, run by publicist and online PR specialist Jennifer Mattern.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Hello, Jennifer, I found your blog via a list where someone mentioned you. I like what you’re doing in comparing these 2 books, each promising a novel in 30 days. Of course, you’ve already figured out that there’s no way you’ll have anything but the roughest of drafts in that time period. However, I think the premise of the books is a good one in that it makes you think about all necessary narrative aspects of a story though it may not yield more than a really good outline.
I read where you’d actually outlined before but then abandoned the project. I think this is one of the dangers of outlining so completely and writing detailed character descriptions etc. It lessens the discovery process. Don’t get me wrong. I think you have to have a basic outline and know where you’re going and why. but if you put so much time, energy, and creative effort into the outline, often times you end up feeling as if you’ve told the story. You get bored with it.
I’ll keep following your journey. Good luck!
Joan Reeves
June 10th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Thanks Joan.
For the previous novel that I outlined, I used the Marshall Plan. I loved it. Some people seem to think it’s too formulaic, but I actually didn’t feel that way - it was more about not letting you leave certain threads of your story alone for too long without progression.
Anyway, I walked away from the previous project to give it some “cooling off” time originally before pursuing it further, and did so by starting work on another piece of fiction a few years back. Unfortunately it was being in the early phases of setting up my PR firm that made it impossible to go back to writing fiction (working literally 12-16 hours per day most days at that time), and in the process I just sort of “forgot” about it.
When I found the outline recently and read through all of it, I found that I was surprisingly still very interested in the story concept, so it’s something I do plan to go back to after doing these outlines as an experiment. And the cooling off period was definitely a good thing, as I realized I need to give it a little extra “oomph” in certain areas. So I’m very pleased to say I haven’t quite gotten bored with it yet.
I don’t think either of the two books I’m testing now are going to compare to the marshall plan in my mind, because I don’t think they’re going to give me as thorough of an outline to work with - at the same time, the past plan probably took a bit longer to follow and adapt to my own needs.
I think what I’m really looking forward to in time is being able to pull out the best elements of each to create a system that really fits my own needs.