Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Agent fear

The day draws near where I will have to start sending queries out to the agents I have been stalking on twitter, and have added in small manageable groups in my excel file. For the past few weeks I have been putting the whole thing off as much as possible and quite frankly, I don’t know why. When my friends ask me (the one or two who know I write) if I’ve had any replies from agents, I tell them I’m waiting for summer to send any queries, so I won’t have to stop working on Through Stranger Eyes (my current WIP) and start on revisions a potential agent may ask. I don’t want to tackle that part of the process with leftover baggage from my current WIP. Sometimes, I answer that I’m holding back to avoid having to revise and edit in the middle of a heat wave on my mobile phone instead of my PC again. I don’t think I could work on a novel-length manuscript on my mobile phone for another summer. (Hint: No A/C for me. PC’s exhaust sends air exceeding 60 C. Not a nice work environment).

However, a few days ago I think I realised I may be a little bit afraid and uncertain about my synopsis and my query. Yes, these two culprits again. I don’t know. Maybe they are not to blame at all.  So now I’ve set a date, a self-imposed deadline. Apparently, I work better when I have deadlines for things that are not directly related to creative work (like attaching files to an email and hitting the send button, as opposed to having to finish a 100k word novel by a specific date, no matter what).

I will send the first query on 10 June. Hopefully I will have finished Through Stranger Eyes by then, and I’ll be able to focus exclusively on the agent hunting process. Fingers crossed.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

No mistakes, only happy accidents

A few days ago, I twitted about a mistake I made (Ok, maybe not a mistake as such – to quote Bob Ross, “there are no mistakes, only happy accidents“) and neglected my outline for just a little bit. By a little bit, I mean a large part of a scene. The result was almost a thousand words of half-decent first-draft quality prose with very interesting character interactions. Alas, I had mixed the characters up. Shameful, I know. In my defense, it was an easy mistake to make, since I almost never name filler characters when I outline, and the two characters shared a few things, like age and lifestyle. The only difference is the character I intended to write about was supposed to have no more than one line of dialogue and appear for maybe half a page, and the one I ended up writing about is an important character, which made the first one a filler, or rather an obstacle to the MC’s progress. A nameless character. Of course you might say that a thousand words for a filler character are too many, but keep in mind there are descriptions, POV character’s thoughts, reactions, and of course the stuff I had on my mind about the important character. Plus, the POV character and that filler one ended up having a long conversation, which was not part of the original plan, but stemmed of how I pictured the important character. My face once I realised what I did was like Arnold’s.

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I don’t know how many of you have read G. R. R. Martin’s book, A song of Ice and Fire, but those of you who have, if you watched last week’s show (season 6, episode 1), would probably have something to say about it. Actually, if you have read the books and watched the show, you probably have a lot to say, but that’s a different story. I’m not going to go into it. I just wanted to point out how easy it is to lose track of something planned in advance, if you miss or change one little detail. For Game of Thrones, it was Martin himself, if I’m not mistaken, when he mentioned of the butterfly effect and how the show and the books have diverged because of them. I had read that blog post earlier in the year, and I know he considers himself as a gardener-writer rather than an engineer-writer, but only after my mistake did I appreciate how easy it is to deviate so exponentially by one single mistake, like a few lines of dialogue.

So, any happy accidents you made throughout your writing career that changed things so much for your stories, you had to change everything and rewrite them?

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Minor update

I have finally managed to get on track with the new WIP (provisional title Through Stranger Eyes) and be as productive as I want to be.For the past couple of days, despite every distraction imaginable, I have managed to produce 2k words solidly. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel. Yeah, I know it’s no big deal, but I had started doubting myself and the story I was trying to write. I mean, it took me hours to put 1k words down, when for my previous book (it feels so nice to be able to say “my previous book,” doesn’t it?) I used to churn 1k words in a little over an hour and a half, maybe two, if I was distracted.

The draft (so far about 21k words) is still not as great as it could be, and chances are I’m going to have to revise and rewrite to similar extent as I did with The Darkening (honestly, I hope not), but I’ve come to accept a simple fact; I can not produce a good first draft. That’s fine. First drafts are what the phrase implies, meaning only the first step of something better. It’s like digging a hole in the ground. It’s not pretty when you’re done, but what matters is what you build afterwards. I still don’t have a good feel for the characters (which was the case with The Darkening as well), but I’m getting there. I might also need to take a step back from the tight POV I’m using at the moment (the same as I used for the previous book), probably choose a more traditional POV, one where the main character can have after their dialogue the invisible tag “s/he said.” But I’m not worried so much about that now. The transition, if I do end up making it, will not be as hard as it was for The Darkening. I think I have also figured out which of the first scenes I’ll delete or merge with others, which means the story resonates better with me now, hopefully even more as I keep going. Overall, I’m satisfied, mainly because I feel productive.

I think one of these days, I’m going to have to publicize the board I’ve been using on Pinterest with images related to cyberpunk and the setting as I imagine it. Are you using any such boards or images when writing about another world (those of you who write fantasy or sci-fi)? Perhaps Google street view when you’re writing about places in other countries? I have found this method to be very helpful.

 

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Outlining methods

Are you a writer who outlines or a pantser? I’m not going to go into which method is best, and certainly nowhere near things like “do this” or “try that.” Whatever method you have chosen, as long as it works for you and you and you’re productive, keep it. For those who prefer to outline (like myself) or those pantsers who would like to have a try at outlining (for whatever reasons that may be), I think this post by Now Novel may be informative and helpful. Keep in mind, these are just some of the methods. I know people who use nothing more than simple bullet points. I know others who mix two or more of these methods, like I do (7-point system and snowflake method). I also use different methods depending on the length of the story I’m dealing with. For example, I use the 7-point system for almost all my short stories, but a combination of snowflake (not all the steps) and 7-point system. I have found these two to be the most helpful when I need to get a better feel for a story. For the current novel I’m working on (Through Stranger Eyes), I have also employed the use of character sheets that allow me to delve deeper into a character and come up with answers about speech patterns, clothing, catch phrases, and even go as far as figuring out MBTI personality types, though the information on these sheets is not directly related to the plot. They do help a lot, however. So keep in mind that more than one method may serve your needs. I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me.

Plot outline creation: 7 smart methods

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

It’s time for the beta readers

Well, the MS has spread its wings and is now away from the nest. Cliche metaphor, I know, but it’s true. It’s in the hands of the beta readers now (thank you all so much for helping out). So far, one of my betas has finished it and raised some valid questions (not to mention the typos that still made their way into the MS, even after all the editing). This is the first time since I started working on it that someone other than me is reading it, an exciting and scary notion. I sent my beta readers a rather long questionnaire to fill (if any of you is reading this, I’m really sorry, but it had to be done) with some 80-90 questions, with YES and NO, and ratings from 1-5, and “other comments” they wanted to add, AND on top of that a critique sheet for those who wanted to say more than a mere comment. I don’t know how they put up with me.

So, now I’m doing my best not to eat my fingernails to their roots, and the best way to do that is to plot the next novel-length story. It’s a sci-fi/cyberpunk story with some mystery elements. I’ve never tried something like that before, so I’m trying to figure things out from a very early stage and save myself all the trouble I had to go through with The Darkening (you may remember I rewrote the book twice after the first draft). I’m working on background stories for everything and everyone, and I’m often working as if I was “reverse engineering” things. Basically I start with where the situation is at the time of the story as well as where will end up by the end of the book, and work backwards in a logical way (e.g. Company Conglomerates own the government. How did this happen? Companies bailed the governments out. Why? Governments went bankrupt. Why? and so on). That’s all world-building, which is fine. My problem is dealing with the mystery element, since I have never tried something similar. I need to insert certain key clues for the main character to find at regular intervals, and their revelation has to come in the most natural way, instead of giving the impression I forced the character to a conclusion. I’m also concerned whether or not the story I have come up with so far is long enough for a novel, AND to make things worse, I also have no ending. I have no idea how the book will end.

What I do know, is that I like this story a lot, and I feel it has potential. I think I even have a title for it. It’s the mystery aspect I’m not sure how to handle correctly.

In other news, I’m collecting a fair amount of rejections for my short stories, so I guess it’s business as usual.