The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: sequels

  • NaNoWriMo #6 part 3

    2013-Participant-Square-ButtonHello again. Here we are, having survived the dread week two of National Novel Writing Month and deep in the mushy middle of the book I’m writing.

    As I type I’m 35,000+ words into the book, which is planned for 100,000 or so words. The first third is behind me and I’m still liking the book. I’ve done some terrible things to my main characters so far and one of them is still fairly unlikable. But that’s on purpose. Also, only two people have died. One off-stage and the other in front of my eyes. I won’t lie, it hurt. It was necessary to move the plot along and lays some groundwork for the end. Others may die along the way. We’ll see when we get there.

    When I’m not working, I’m writing or holding a cat in my lap. Even when I’m at work I’m thinking about what I could be writing. This year counts as a major success for me so far not because I’m way ahead of the game and hitting a higher average daily word count than I aimed at, but because  I’m balancing work, exercise (which is more important than ever), family life and the writing all at once. Somehow it’s coming together again.

    That didn’t happen last year. The first time was in 2011 and that novel is maybe the best thing I’ve written. Until this year, anyway.

    It’s going well, some parts are easy and others not so much. Familiar characters and settings are fun and putting them through their paces is even more fun. I like trying to figure out how they’re going to react. The best part of inventing the future through stories is finding the difficult bits and working through them to the easy ones.

    Now I’ve got writing to do. Talk to you next week. Hope your novel’s going well, too. Tell me about it if you want.

  • An Idea of an Idea

    The ideas I actually end up seeing through are the ones that come to me in a flash and leave me quivering with excitement. The ideas that won’t let me sleep until I’ve started them. The ideas that force me from the shower still half covered in soap so that I can begin writing. Those ideas are too powerful to write down for later. They demand immediate attention.  But right now I’m busy… so they’re hiding away in a closet, talking amongst themselves and getting ready to battle it out so that when I’m ready for them, they’ll be there, and the best idea can present itself to me. I’m not actually included in the decision making process.

    At least… that’s what I’ve been telling myself, because they’ve been pretty quiet lately.
    (more…)

  • Spicing with Subplots

    Plots are quite pleasant for novel readers and even more pleasant for novelists, providing a structure for the writing and all that jazz.  But subplots are the sugar and spice.  As a writer, I don’t enjoy the main plot so much–once I’ve constructed the gist of the book, it’s difficult to change, and that element of the creative work is done.  For me, subplots allow play and fluid creativity on the sideline of a novel.

    Subplots bear especial importance in science fiction writing.  My novels are set in the near future; their plots involve characters who live and breathe and grow through that future.  They don’t necessarily think about how their own time came to be.  But for me (and I expect for many other readers) there must be a link between our present and that future-present, and I tuck those links into subplots: an older person who watched those changes unfold, perhaps, or a holdover community that progressed in a different direction, or other minor characters whose wanderings explore a different part of the world.

    In my reading and writing both, I notice that subplots serve a very important commercial-literary purpose:  sequels!   If a book does not wrap up its main plot, I am annoyed and less likely to feel the book was a satisfactory literary experience.  But subplots can be left floating, a stem into a future full plot with its own sundry subplots and schema. My NaNoWriMo novel of 2010 ended up having a character work on the border crossing between Kansas and Missouri; her relationships there were minor details in context but contributed a lot to the sequel in the end of Novel2011.  And someday one of the subplots from the border-crossing will spout into its very own main plot, making the annual a perennial.