A funny thing happened on the way to the ending…
I’m loving my new being-an-author career, despite my inability to earn a living from it. (Yet?)
One of the things I enjoy is that each book feels like it comes with its own unique challenges. I hope that means I’m learning as I go along.
For the current book in my Leeth Dossier series, Lost Girl (#5), there were two challenges. The first was my feeling that on the subject of plot, I fly too much by the seat of my pants, so the whole journey from start to end is like a billy-cart racing downhill out of control. Exhilarating, but also nerve-wracking.
Looking back through my revision control files, I deduce I started writing the Lost Girl segment of the story back in Apr/May 2009. I wrote a chunk more in Jan 2015 before posting the chapters for review on the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror over a few months and receiving valuable feedback. By Oct 2015 it had grown to about 25,000 words. I think that was when I set it aside to devote all my energy to completing the earlier books in the series.
That took five years.
So, for book #5 I was starting with a broad idea of the story, 25,000 words of draft, and thanks to a discussion with Jon Marshall one night, a good feeling for the theme of the novel. I also wanted to try a hybrid approach to plotting.
Pantser or Plotter?
I love the organic surprises and creativity that comes from flying by the seat of my pants, but at the same time, having watched his video Misconceptions About Rewriting, and from my own experience in algorithmic development, I deeply understood the value in at least high-level planning. So I hoped that creating the bones of a plot might work well, since it would only be a sketchy outline and thus pretty painless to change it if the story started going in a different direction.
I started reading John Truby’s “The Anatomy of Story” in early 2019, reaching a quarter of the way through before getting distracted. (I see there’s also a video interview here.) The book and advice is fine, but it wasn’t sparking any flames for me and I set it aside. (I do intend to return to it and finish reading it though.)
I’d downloaded a free writing book from Daniel David Wallace titled “How to Write Better Sentences”, and watched some of his videos, and liked them, so when he offered a course on his character-driven plotting course in December 2019 I decided to sign up for it. I did that diligently from mid Dec 2019 to end of Jan 2020, and was very happy with the outcome. I had lots of ideas for how the plot would unfold, all of course driven by the characters, which is how I have to write.
The problem that remained was that I only had a satisfying end. I think you also need the ending to be unpredictable. I (still) don’t know how you plan that. For me it’s just happened by luck or inspiration, and I was still in the same position, lacking that final piece of the puzzle.
As I’ve written on several occasions now, I’ve really come to trust Unconscious Thought Theory. It’s an excellent way to use the full power of your mind and surprise yourself. So I carried on writing, always with the lightly-plotted ending in mind, and things flowed along pretty well.
Now, because the World Science Fiction Convention was to be held in New Zealand in July/Aug 2020, a place I’d wanted to visit and a convention that seems exciting, I planned to attend. I booked my travel and accommodation, with the goal of publishing the book late July and maybe even launching it or promoting it in some way at the WorldCon. To do that I needed to send the MS to Dave at ThEditors.com by E/April.
So I was trying hard to meet a deadline of E/March to have a good 1st draft of the MS. I was extremely lucky to be little affected by the unprecedented Australian bushfires of 2019, but no one could remain unmoved by those events - from the heroism of our fireys and communities ( (even this Aussie speculative fiction anthology put together for fire charities: Stories of Hope), to the jaw-dropping failures of our so-called political leader to actually lead.
There was also the ongoing drama of the Democratic run-up toward the 2020 US presidential election, which I had grown addicted to (since the US has an inordinate impact on world affairs, and I could see what a turning point the 2020 election could be, with luck). Then of course, the global pandemic of Covid-19 arrived, making the insignificance of my own efforts even clearer. Now, I may not be as stubborn as Leeth, but I am stubborn, so I carried on.
Like the period after the death of my wife Stella in Dec 2014, my writing sustained me and kept me positive. So for that reason as much as any I stuck to my plans.
Which brings me to the part of the story which most surprised me — and in the end delighted me.
How did it go in the end?
Approaching my deadline, I had set myself a (120,000) word count limit to try to hold myself to, to keep the book a manageable size for all concerned. And as the days fell away and March 31 approached, it looked like I might just do it. But when the days dropped from three to two to one and I arrived at the cusp of the ending, I’d run out of time and still didn’t know fully what the ending would be.
Partly this was just having confidence in my unconscious to pull a rabbit out of the hat; partly it was the belief that if I didn’t know what the ending would be, it might mean that when (if?) it did arrive it would also surprise a reader; and partly it was having faith in my characters. I also had an interesting mix of actors there at the ending. There was the potential to have… (counting…) seven major players in the scene at the end. Unfortunately that meant there was a huge range of ways the ending could play out.
So I think there was a certain amount of choice-paralysis at work, although it’s also possible my unconscious was simply beavering away at the complex problem I’d set it. Of course I was also worried I might not be able to pull it off at all. Would the ending be good enough? I didn’t want just an exciting one, I wanted it to have emotional depth too. So the stakes felt high to me.
And still I couldn’t seem to make much progress. Here’s how the last several days went:
March 29: Had reached the climactic scene — I mean, all the
players were on stage together.
March 30: Wrote 3700 words of the scene.
March 31: Day off, visiting Mum.
April 1: (astute readers will see this is after E/Mar) Strangely
blocked, until I forced myself to design the physical location. Then: +600
words.
April 2: Wrote 3,600 words and halfway through the “action” part of
the ending.
April 3: Finished the “action” part (wrote 1000 words).
April 4: Still didn’t know how it would end. I simply considered
each actor and let them do their thing. Various agendas in play,
conflicting, and stage fully set and conducive to just letting the movie
roll. Each one being clever and true to themselves, a dramatic race to the
finish with real challenges and emotional drama. At the very end of the
day (11:50pm), I felt delighted. My characters had thrilled me and moved
me. I’d been biting my nails more than once, and in tears more than once.
5,100 words and the MS was basically complete.
I’ve never experienced anything like that last day. My feeling was one of excitement and satisfaction. I made some small additions while cooking dinner (9pm), and when I sat down with it I realised I didn’t want to watch any TV as I ate, I instead wanted to dwell on those final scenes, to savour and digest it all. I suppose it felt a bit like I’d just stepped off an emotional roller-coaster!
I still have thirty one small gaps to fill or issues to check, and then lots of work to polish it up enough to be ready to send to my editor, so I can’t really relax much yet. But the weight on my shoulders of finishing that critical 1st draft, and perhaps as importantly, writing a ‘good’ ending, is over. So a lot of unacknowledged stress has fallen away, and I must say I’m looking forward to the next few weeks.
I’ve written this because the experience felt really special, and I wanted to capture it. It was nothing like I’d had for the previous books. Once again, I feel I learned a lot. My fingers are crossed in the hope that readers will have the same opinion!
