Full Spectrum Story

Whenever I'm away from home I carry my camera in my purse, just in case I see something I want to shoot (in the good way.) Experience has taught me that you never know when something interesting is going to cross your path.

This unretouched shot here is one I took while I was sitting in a diner have breakfast with my guy and our kid. I looked up at a shiny glass surface, but instead of seeing my own face I saw this. Now, while there are (cough) always rainbows in my heart, generally I don't see them in mirrored objects. I was seeing it because I was sitting in just the right place at precisely the correct moment; the sun and certain properties of light did the rest (and if you want to know what I was looking at, keep reading.)

The image made me think of writing, naturally, because of course everything is about writing. Story is like the reverse of refracting light, in that the creation of it begins with a wide spectrum of elements -- characters, plot, dialogue, action, setting, time period -- which through the prism of the writer's storytelling hopefully all blend back together into a single, dazzling read.

It would be nice to play God with a novel and only have to say "Let there be light," but as any writer will tell you there's a lot more work involved in it for us. I'd say the most difficult part of making this happen for the writer is being too close to see beyond the spectrum of elements. Occupational hazard, I think; we have to be so detail-oriented when we're working that we can be blinded by the dispersion. This juggling act we do often results in an uneven execution that affects the whole story.

Fortunately we have the editing phase, when hopefully we can back off enough to see all the elements, not just what we were so zeroed in on at the time of creation.

Every book you write has its own set of challenges. With the one I just finished I was fully immersed in four of the characters: my two protagonists and two central secondary characters. This quartet had strong, distinct personalities, and the story issues they had to deal with were so interwoven even one misstep could have turned into a big ball of tangled plot yarn. An added problem was with one who decided to give me nothing but grief whenever she was on the page; at one point I was so frustrated I actually killed her to shut her up. Which of course I went back and rewrote as soon as I cooled off enough to do the daily edit.

My daily edits are what really prevented the book from being all character and no story, and also saved me from having to do a massive rewrite or a total manuscript toss-out. I knew I was focusing too much on the characters, so at the end of each day I made myself stop obsessing about them and take a hard look at the other elements in the scene. In the beginning of the book I saw that I was rushing through or skipping things that needed to be there so I could get the characters on the page and transcribe all this great dialogue in my head. By the middle of the book, I was remembering this while I was writing new material, and correcting myself in the process of getting the story down. The last half of the book went much smoother, and what I produced was much more balanced and needed far fewer rewrites.

Every writer has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and unless you're a cookie cutter writer every story will bring these together in different ways. Your challenge is to find the correct combination of elements and focus that produces that single dazzling result.

I found this wallpaper while I was hunting for spectrum images, and I think I'm going to put it into my desktop background file for when I start my next novel. Seeing this every morning will be an excellent reminder to mind the details, but also keep my eye on the full spectrum of the story.



Spectrum Colors image via 3D Wallpapers

Gotta Have Faith

I mentioned in comments to yesterday's post that I finally came up with the title for my NaNo novel. I didn't have one until now because I've already changed my mind three times about what I'm going to write in November. After much thought I decided the haunted house story needs to percolate a bit longer; I also briefly arm-wrestled the temptation to write a contracted book early versus having fun (fun and I won; the contract work will wait until it comes up on the regular work schedule.)

I did all this by blindly following what felt most right. I may pre-plan just about everything about the books I write, but during the decision-making process the comes before all the planning, I've learned to have faith and ride along with my story instincts.

I don't think story instincts are especially logical. Mine cannot be categorized, alphabetized or otherwise organized (I know. I've tried.) I don't know how they work, where they come from or why I got stuck with them, but I've come to trust them, and they've never let me down. My downfalls have come from not following them, and I've stumbled enough times to put my trust where it obviously belongs.

Once I get in line with my story instincts, everything seems to fall into place. Once I made my decision on what to write, I found my title. I also named my protagonists, created backstories for them and figured out their primary conflict. I went online, shopped around and found what I need for my cover art. Other characters have started emerging from nowhere and are telling me their stories. It's a lot like seeing rain drops fall on still waters and watching the ripples form and spread out, and then another, and then two more, etc. I'd like to take credit for what generates that creative storm, but it's a very enigmatic part of my process over which I have no control whatsoever.

The story instincts don't always kick in automatically, and when that happens I feel like I'm fighting the work instead of serving it. Over time I've come up with a few tricks to jump start things, but what mainly works is relaxing, reading and not thinking about it for a day or two. Then when all the noise is out of my head, I pay a brief, polite visit to my conundrum and try to see it with fresh eyes -- and that's when the story instincts generally wake up and go to work.

The theory I've heard that makes the most sense to me about how we acquire these story instincts is saturation via constant exposure. Writers read and write so much that we could be imprinting ourselves with innumerable bits of data that go on to form and guide our choices. It would explain why it's so hard to define story instincts, as they would exist both on conscious and subconscious levels. I just wish they came with an on-switch so I wouldn't have to spend any time driving myself crazy over what should be a fairly simple and logical decision, but maybe that's part of the process, too.

When do you depend on your story instincts? What do you do when you can't tap into them? Let us know in comments.