Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

And the end came at last

Yes, dear readers. The end of the first part of this journey has come to an end. I’m proud to announce the end of the first draft of my first novel, The Darkening. Allow me a moment for this to sink in with me ’cause I still find it hard to accept. *Chris breathes deeply*

If you’re in the same boat as me and you’ve just started writing or are about to finish your first novel, I can tell you for a fact that the feeling is strange. For me, there was a lot of joy but at the same time, a lot of emptiness, since the thing I had spent 5 months of my life on was now over. I need to find something else to work on for the next 1-2 months, as I intend to leave the story alone and not even think about it. That’s going to be VERY hard ’cause I need to know I finish things as soon as they get my hands on them. I can’t stand knowing I have things undone. That’s something else I have to re-educate myself. In a way one could say I felt like those people who are obsessed with something for many years and when they finally get what they want, afterwards they are left empty inside. I won’t say it’s not daunting. Quite honestly, it’s scares me. What really freaks me out is that feeling of emptiness. Perhaps at a deeper level I saw this project (being the first completed novel-length work) as the dearest of them all. I’m somewhat emotionally attached to it. Perhaps in a deep unconscious way I always thought I’d be working on it, even though I wanted to finish it. It may sound strange to you but it’s like when parents know they have to let their kids fly out of the nest yet they find it very hard to do so.

Yesterday I wrote two alternative endings for the story, one of which will entail changing a great deal of the book and the main character. So, technically, I wrote The End three times in total. The fact however remains: after five months of writing, I finally scribbled down The End. I wrote Scene 1/Chapter 1 on 9 June 2014 and finished it on 8 November. The original plan was to spend 3 months on it, expecting that writing on my cell phone instead of my PC, wouldn’t interfere too much. I was wrong. At that time, as some of you may remember, I could hardly write 1000 words per day. Which meant that the book took 2 more months to finish.

On top of that, the book was supposed to end at no more than 120k words, from which I was hopeful I’d be able to cut around 15k-20k words during revisions. Alas, the book now stands at a whooping 149k words! That’s VERY bad, as I don’t think many agents would invest the time into something as big from a newbie. Even if I do manage to trim it down by 20k words, I’ll be left with 130k words, which is still not good enough. There’s always the possibility that I will need to squeeze the first 10 chapters/scenes into 2 in order to bring the inciting moment of the story closer to the beginning. If that’s the case then I’ll have to condense 30k words into no more than 8k at best. The thought makes me laugh but, make no mistake, it’s a not a happy laughter 😛

One thing’s true: the book is over! I like the characters and the complexity the main character has (madness and everything). I like the world a lot, which is probably what made me so eager to expand the similarly titled short story into a book.

Wow! I finished a book… Sometimes I catch myself pondering on that and it seems too overwhelming. I mean, it’s been a year and a half since I started writing. In that time I wrote half of my fantasy book, thought my writing skill was inadequate for the story (and pretty much everything else) and the world I had in mind, put it on hold in order to get more experience, started a new book and now… it’s finished. Even writing these words is hard, as my mind goes back and forth on that. To those of you have finished more than a book these words may read as too corny or too self-centred but to me this is huge. So bear with me please. I think I’ll be alright by next week. I think. I hope.

Some of you will be utilising this month to write as much as you can, thanks to NaNoWriMo. Whatever you do, no matter when you choose to do it (during NaNo or any other time in the year), just make sure you finish your book. That’s all that should matter. If you’re as passionate about it as I am (and most of you have started long before I did, so chances are you’re more passionate), then the rewards you’ll reap will be so many and so overwhelming 🙂

I’m going out to celebrate. I’m taking the day off. On Monday I’ll start working on a new short story and perhaps start outlining the next book 😉 It’s going to have a light cyberpunk theme to it, so it’ll be sci-fi. Too many ideas are floating in my head right now.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Dialogue

Dialogue has been one of the hardest things I have to tackle when I write. When I first started writing, I read somewhere that dialogue is the key to push a story forward. The article said (and that’s what has stayed with me since) that if the writer finds himself in a pickle as to how to proceed in a story, then have two characters talk about it and that should give a way out. Alas, having only days of writing experience back then, I failed to understand the deeper meaning of that. I followed it to the letter and earlier versions of my now-on-hold fantasy novel were plagued with dialogues that served nothing and were woody and lame.

Have I improved as a writer since? In many aspects, the answer is yes. Have I solved the problem with dialogue, improving the way I use it? I say this with the utmost sincerity; NO! It still gives me a very hard time BUT it’s not as bad as it was. Still, it’s my main problem when I write, so much so that sometimes I dread it.

The novel I’m about finish (2 1/2 scenes to go, yay!) takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. There are very few people left and those who have survived, are in hiding in as much dark places as possible (hence the title, The Darkening). Isolation (and its associated mental issues) are a key in the story. As a result, there’s very little dialogue involved, although there are times where that can’t be avoided, especially when the character is talking to the voices in his head. Later in the story, things change and when other characters appear, dialogue is unavoidable, along with my problems to write them convincingly.

So what does dialogue entail?

Virtually every book that is related to teaching us how to write fiction has at least one chapter devoted to dialogue and dialogue tags or non-dialogue tags (for the latter, I’m sure there’s a name but I’m afraid I don’t know it.) Dialogue tags are the little bits that follow (or sometimes precede) whatever a character says in the form of “he/she said.”
“Get off my property,” the old farmer said/ he said.
“Thanks,” she said.
Non-dialogue tags are somewhat longer sentences that are related to what a character says and they usually show to the reader something the character is doing while speaking or emphasize a character’s trait.
She put both hands on her hips and glared at him. “Well? What’s your excuse now?”
“Are you sure it’s safe?” He looked over her shoulder, biting his nail.
One of the main differences in these examples is that they tend to use different punctuation. Dialogue tags use a comma before the “he/she said” tag and “said” acts as a way of linking the two bits, whereas non-dialogue tags often use a full stop. Another difference is that in the case of non-dialogue tags, the sentence that follows or precedes whatever is in the quotation marks is a sentence of its own and is fully capable of standing on its own.

Both kinds are essential because they tell the reader who tells what and in what way.

My earlier writings were terrible because I thought that said was such a boring word, showing so little of each character’s emotional state, so I thought “let’s spice it up a bit, shall we?” So I used words like “replied,” “grated,” “reciprocated,” etc. The problem was (and still is) that English is not my native language. As a result language barrier would soon kick in, leaving me repeating the same words. So I’d run to my bookcase, get my dictionaries, go online to as many online thesauri as possible and find new words. But they were words I had never seen or used before. Which after a while made me think “If I don’t know that word, then there’s bound to be someone else out there who also hasn’t seen or heard this word as well.”

I think most of us have gone through a similar stage, when we started writing. It happens naturally, in our attempt to be original and to show that we have some potential with this whole thing. Instead of that, we end up making things worse for us. At least I did.

I don’t think dialogue needs anything more than “he/she said” at most cases. I hardly ever use anything other than that nowadays. I had read once an article that said there was no need to write “Fired? What do yo mean?” he/she grated. Instead of the word “grated” it was better to have the same character sitting at the edge of their chair, perhaps holding something on their lap or having them tapping their foot lightly, then having them stand up with such intensity, their chair would fall back, later banging the office door as they left the room. The dialogue mentioned above can be broken down to increase intensity and show the reader all the feelings and emotions within the word “grated.” Here’s an example:
Alan sat on the edge of his seat, his foot tapping slightly with a mind of its own. He had his eyes fixed on Mr. Boss, studying every move he made, while the man read through his file.
“Alan, I’m afraid we’re going to have to lay you off,” Mr Boss said and closed the file slowly. “You see, the company -”
“Fired?” Alan stood up so fast that he sent the chair flying back. “What do you mean? After all these years?”

It’s not the best description of a scene but you get the meaning, right? The first example tells us about the character’s emotions and reactions (grated is a rather descriptive word), whereas the second one (though a miserable attempt at it, I admit) SHOWS us all these things. And you can see both dialogue tags and non-dialogue tags in action.

I hope this helps a bit 🙂

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 3 Comments

How to blow some steam off

Ever since I said to myself “you’re about to finish the draft, Chris” the process has slowed to a near stop. Well, not really to a stop but words come to me a lot harder and I fail to meet my daily writing quota. Which, for a near-perfectionist on selective issues (yes, I know it sounds weird but I’m not a perfectionist in everything in my life) like me, it’s annoying. Mind you, I’m not as much a perfectionist as Patrick Rothfuss is, so no, I don’t go as far as making 80 drafts for one story (11 is the highest I’ve ever done for a short story and my average seems to be around 8-9). It reaches the point where I feel guilty for not meeting my daily word limit, which in turn makes things worse ’cause I push myself harder and that only leads to even fewer words. So, I thought, it must be the fact that too much pressure has accumulated inside. Which isn’t productive.

So, I decided to try (and I stress the word try because it won’t be easy and chances are I’ll fail at it miserably) to do as many of the following things as possible.

1. I will try to stop being so caught up into how much better other people’s work is than mine.

Ever since I started I always, ALWAYS compared my work to professional writers’ work. Yes, it’s good to have their skill and their work as a guide but perhaps a perfectionist in writing (like me) goes beyond that, thus making writing a living hell for him/her.

2. I will try to share my work with more people in my old critique group over at Scribophile or get me a beta reader (people willing to help, please comment bellow, thank you 🙂 )

I haven’t uploaded anything or written anything new since June, which is when I wrote the first line of draft for the novel I’m working on. I’ve put on hold all other short stories I had in my mind and dedicated myself to finishing the novel. It paid off, since I’m about to finish BUT at the expense of getting a pat on the back by getting a positive critique or comment about my work every now and then. All I had to go with was my inner critic and, being a perfectionist when it comes to writing, that critic may be a little bit too harsh. Probably. Not sure yet.

3. I must try to get in touch with “free writing” by using creativity prompts, usually visual stimuli like fantasy/scifi/horror images (in my case that’s what I like the most).

This used to be an exercise for me, before I started working on The Darkening. To help me write on a daily basis, I usually scoured tumblr and deviantart hoping to find an image that would stir something in me (btw, I love the word “stir”. I should make a mental note to pay attention on the number of times I have used it in my novel). Then I would sit down and write a small story, usually no bigger than 1000 words. I used to love doing that but it’s been ages since the last time I did it.

4. I must try not to worry about me having gone way over my original word limit for my novel.

There’s very little I can do about this but I have to somehow convince myself that when I start revising The Darkening, I will be able to cut the story down between 100k – 105k words. Right now I’ve reached 130k and I’m still not done. 5 more scenes… God help me, if I make it and an agent asks me to trim it by 10%-20%. I’ll probably cry if I see such a request or just throw my pc out of the window.

5. I must try not to think of the pressure the unavoidable rejections will put on me, when I’ll be querying agents.

I don’t think I have much to say about this. It’s just something I have to learn to live with. All the rejections in the world when it comes to submitting short stories are probably not enough to toughen me up when agent hunting comes. *Chris gulped nervously and made a horrified face.*

Have you got any other ideas about the issue? Some miracle technique that allows you to blow some steam off when you need it? If, so please let the rest of us know and comment below.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Status update: the closer I get to finishing, the further away I am from it.

It seems the closer I get to finishing the first draft, the longer I am from actually doing it. 7 more scenes/chapters remain before the last full stop, the so painfully sought-after “The End” and yet never in these past 4 months have I felt more tired and the end further away from me than now. I don’t know what’s wrong. Perhaps I’m fed up with it, perhaps something inside me tells me that the story sucks, that there are too many plot holes or the plot points are too far-fetched (it’s a post-apocalyptic story, which means people assign it the “sci-fi” tag, thus some parts of it, should be far-fetched to a certain extent, right?). Perhaps I feel that I have often led the (potential) reader by the hand too much, instead of letting him/her think about some things, perhaps it’s because a lot of my character development is done by showing his inner thoughts (going over the top with italics, perhaps?). The point is, where at one point a month ago I could sit down and write 1700 to 2000 words in a couple of hours (usually between 10 in the morning and be done by 1 in the afternoon with a 30-45 minute total break), now I can barely write 1000-1200 words up to 2 or 3 in the afternoon. The fact that I have exceeded my originally planned word limit for the draft doesn’t help either. The uncertainty I see before me, doesn’t help either.

125,147 words. Two scenes away from reaching the climax of the story and closing the main character’s arc. Seven scenes before the draft is over.

Any of you, dear readers/fellow writers, know if having only 5 chapters left for what follows the climax all the way to the end of the story is enough? I keep having the feeling that all the key points are in the wrong place, either too soon in the story or too late. Every time I read a technical book related to structure, I see things in my book that are wrong, when the previous structure-related book said it’s ok. It’s so frustrating! If I ever get to finish this thing, I’m so going out and celebrating it with the few friends who know I’m writing.

Of course, try as I might, I can’t see myself feeling relaxed after it, ’cause I will have to find beta readers or editors who know the craft of writing better than me. Wouldn’t things be sooooooo much easier if every one of us aspiring writers had two mentors by our side? One also aspiring writer or newly published who could help with the big, eye-hurting mistakes and then another one who would be a well known writer who’s been at it for years? How helpful would that be? Both could benefit noobs like me so much.

Too much whining. If you have an answer to my previous question, please let me know. Need to prepare the synopsis for the next scene/chapter for tomorrow. Until next time, I bid you all adieu.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Staying focused

For the past two weeks, my mind has been all over the place and I have found it very difficult to focus and reach my daily word limit or use the time I have allocated to myself for writing. In my case that was because of weariness (it’s this time of the writing process where I need to take a couple of days off from writing, though saying it is one thing; doing it is a struggle against my guilt for it, haha) and because of a minor health issue. It made me think about it, however, so today I thought I should write a few things on the topic of staying focused.

Mind you, this is my take on the subject based on personal observations. It doesn’t mean the following will work for you too. It may be worth giving it a shot though, if you find it hard to stay focused.

1. WRITE!

Early on, when I had just started writing, I kept finding articles about the need to have a routine because it would help an aspiring writer. At the time I thought of that as too much, arguing that inspiration is not something that you can just summon out of thin air and expect it to work. I thought to myself that it would be better to just feel the need to write rather than force it. It wasn’t until almost a year later that I tried it. Since then I have seen remarkable change in the quality of the work I produce and, most of the time, it’s almost as if my mind switches on for writing when the time comes. True, not every day’s work is something I’d keep during revisions BUT the point is this daily ritual keeps me focused and eager to write. You may say “but you have a novel to write and to plan the next one, therefore you can stay focused.” True, but when I didn’t have a novel in mind or didn’t feel like doing it, I went on to my tumblr account, found a photo I liked and a wrote a short story of no more than 1000 words, just to keep me in shape. Did it help? Looking back to it, I think it added its own little corner stone. Had I written whenever I felt like it, chances are I would have never written anything or it would have been impossible to tame my mind now that I have work to do.

2. Time allocation

Yeah, that one’s a bitch. Our daily lives are packed full with things to do that somehow appear (and, to some extent, are) more important that just sitting down and scribble make-believe stories. However, you won’t get any writing done unless you allow yourselves to have even a 30 minute time frame to sit down and write. It sounds ridiculous, right? 30 minutes, you say? That’s all? Well, if that’s all you can spare in a 24-hour long day, then that’s all you can spare! Would you rather not spare it at all and keep your stories in your mind or in the form of notes? As long as you can find the right time for this 30-minute window, then you will be able to use it to your advantage, provided you have first followed suggestion number 1 above. I think the two work well together. You won’t produce 2000 or 3000 words per day but you will produce 500 words and that’s 500 more words than doing nothing.

3. Setting goals you can meet at the end of the day

I guess ultimately this suggestion could be part of both previous suggestions but I think it should be on its own. Writing something big, like a novel, with so many distractions around you (*cough cough* internet distracts people?! Life does that too?!) it’s nice to have set manageable goals for each day and see them come to fruition. My goals, as far as writing is concerned, are to end the day having written AND read for a few hours. See? Nothing grand or intimidating; just stay focused on my writing and reading routine basically.

4.Use some sort of an outline

Let me be crystal clear about this: not everyone can work with an outline. I’m not suggesting that everyone should use an outline. What I am saying is give it a shot, see if it works for you. Just do it right before you decide it’s not for you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an outline in the most detailed form (like the snowflake method myself and others use, which could be a book of its own if you think about the amount of words written there). You could just have a notebook by your side when you first get an idea, write your thoughts down as they come and then rearrange them accordingly to have an easy flowing plot and story. That way you can save a lot of time during editing and revising. I tried writing “on the fly” when I first started and it felt nice. It felt very creative. But I had ideas popping up every page for things that had happened many chapters before because the story shaped itself as I wrote it. That meant I had to go back and change things in previous chapters or inserting a comment on the page to correct it later. Eventually, my mind got bogged down. I had material to write, ideas to use but it was a mess in my head and I felt overwhelmed. The result was to almost give up, thinking I just wasn’t good enough for it. The feeling sucked! Why? I wasn’t focused!

5. Try not to edit before you finish the entire work

Following the previous suggestion, it may be a good idea to avoid editing last day’s work on the following day. I know a lot of professional writers do it (if I’m not mistaken, G.R.R. Martin does it?) but they are who they are and have years of experience. For me, an aspiring writer, I feel that if I were to follow that I would most probably end up editing the edited edits (!!) more than actually producing new material. Which in turn would mean that staying focused on whatever new I had to write, would be a struggle. I don’t know, it’s possible I’m weak-minded and lack discipline. Think about this, however: this may work for you if you have very little time to spend on writing. If that’s the case, the last thing you want is to spend these precious 30 minute window you have into editing instead of finishing your story up and then edit.

6. READ!

I keep an excel file where I copy (yes, copy) entire sentences and phrases from books that I read. These sentences usually refer to things that an author used in their story and had troubled me in the past or perhaps ways the writer used to draw my attention to something. I then go over them, study them and see how he/she handled that similar situation. I try to see the technique used, how each sentence is structured and then try to see how would I write it instead. The result I produce is usually sub-par BUT during this process not only I get to learn how others (better writers than me) worked their way around my problem but at the same time I put my mind into the whole writing process again. Which as I pointed our earlier, keeps me focused 🙂 Also, while reading a book you may get that light bulb over your head glowing with an idea. Which gets the productivity juices flowing etc etc.

7. Avoid wasting time on the internet

Since most of us have things happening in the house that distract us all the time, try not to add another distraction. If you can, refrain from checking your Facebook feed or tumblr or whatever else you use. I have finally managed to free myself completely from Facebook (even though I have my personal FB page and my author page) and I hardly ever check them. In fact, at the end of the day, I may check momentarily my author page, just in case a new follower appeared or someone sent a message (which hardly ever happens, by the way). But now that I’ve freed myself from Facebook’s clutches, I’m more focused and I feel happier when I see it’s one o’clock in the afternoon and I have written almost 2000 words.