Nick Bryan

writing about writing

Hammer & Claw – Adventures resembling Writer’s Block (WriteBlog #16)

by

I believe these WriteBlogs were meant to be weekly, but obviously that hasn’t happened. Upsetting, because it means I hit that old blog cliche – a post opening with an apology for not blogging recently.

Shame I picked this time to drop off the WriteBlog schedule, as I was chuffed with the last one about comic scripting – nice balance between self-indulgent me-talk and links to worthwhile resources. Anyway, let’s move on. What’s been going down? Well, there was the Hobson & Choi birthday…

Double Trouble

As I’m sure you all know, due to being avid H&C fans, I did two chapters of the serial last week to mark our first birthday on the 17th of February. This was a very apt idea, but the execution of it utterly killed me. I really thought it wouldn’t be too hard – writing a chapter usually only takes a day or so, I had the necessary extra day spare – but then two things hit me:

ONE – real-life interruptions happened – occasions to be planned, other work to be done, pints of beer that wouldn’t drink themselves, that sort of thing. Frustrating, but survivable if not for…

TWO – I got stuck on the first of these chapters. H&C #54 just killed me, the bastard. I have an entire draft worth of material that I threw away. And even worse, it isn’t even material I can use later – all scrap. I’d “budgeted” two days to write both chapters, and ended up taking most of three days on just the first one.

Mustn’t get too doomy, I made it – thanks to the paranoid amount of padding I add into my schedule, I was able to have those problems but still get the chapters up. And then I tried to move onto another project and ran into a dead stop of uninspiration. Basically, my entire writing productivity for most of February is the previously-mentioned short comic script and meeting my self-imposed H&C deadlines. This, by my usual standards for a non-Christmas month, isn’t amazing. So, could this mean…

WRITER’S BLOCK – THE SCOURGE OF THE MIND

Hmm.

I’ve never got as far as saying Writer’s Block Doesn’t Exist, but I’ve never accepted that it’s a condition all on its own. Yes, there are times in life when I’ve struggled to write due to external circumstances or the story just not working – or, as per ONE and TWO above, both of them at once when really damn lucky. Might as well call that writer’s block, it certainly blocks your writing.

So, not much to do beyond try to work around it – throwing my hands up and acting as if I’m cursed would just annoy me. Case in point – today, I fucked off the project I was stuck on (after emailing a couple of friends for help) and went to do something else. Not really a long-term solution, gotta go back to it eventually, but I got a decent amount done at a good speed today for once, and feel much better as a result. One reason why I’m back here doing this, I suspect.

Admittedly, I was going to write more tonight, but got distracted screwing around on Twitter. A major street in south-west London was flooded with sewage, you see, and there’s no way you can’t want to make puerile jokes about that burst of turd. It’s funny because it’s poo, after all. (Kudos to whoever on Twitter coined the term poonami.)

So I churned out a few quips, one of them got a few retweets and again, I feel better. And when I’m feeling beaten down and anxious about the state of things, I’ll take any good cheer I can get. Even if it is slightly embarrassing that my most “viral” Twitter effort in a few months is a joke about shite and undigested sweetcorn…

Comic Scripting – Useful links, tools and thought balloons (WriteBlog #15)

by

First and foremost, before I get into this week’s actual topic: the Seventh Star Press anthologies containing my two new stories are available for e-readers now! Click this link here to see purchase links from various online places. Not to influence your decision, but they’re good fun. The Unseelie Court piece, in particular, is one of my favourite short works.

But that isn’t what I’m here to blog about. After a short break to get the novel editing underway, I returned to comic scripting in the last few days, as I still owe a script to GreyHaven Comics. My last effort was chronicled here, and that got through editorial with only minor changes, so how’d it go this time?

Let’s Research Comics!

In a bid to get more under the skin of this process, I’ve read a lot of comics lately, plus listened to a few episodes of Word Balloon and Let’s Talk Comics – in-depth interview podcasts with comic creators. (If you want a recommendation, episode #6 of Let’s Talk Comics with Brian Michael Bendis was both fun and inspirational, although quite long.)

Also, for anyone looking to read about comic-stuff, a lot of creators are very active on Tumblr, answering questions, posting thoughts and suchlike. If you’re starting an account and following people, some of the better ones I’ve found for writing process talk are:

For some of those, it probably helps if you’re familiar with their actual works to get the most out of it. Kieron Gillen’s podcast Decompressed also has a lot of interesting comics-thoughts from various creators. Also, I was at the recording of the Brubaker-Phillips episode and I’m sure I heard myself chuckle at least a couple of times. So yes, those were my methods of inspiration.

Good job I was feeling upbeat, as I’d set myself a difficult task in terms of actual scripting – the narrative ran along two parallel tracks, connected by a slideshow, with only four pages to fit it all. I hope you get to read it one day, it’ll be cool if I pull it off. Or if I’ve made a total mess of everything, hopefully you never see it and I’ll throw all the copies down a well.

After all the materials I’ve looked at, I think I’ve hit a scripting tone I’m happy with, in terms of describing what has to be conveyed without being too commanding about how exactly the artist should do their job – although we won’t find out how well I did until all’s said and done. But as I say, the editor seemed happy with my last one. This latest script should go off for editorial perusal in the next week or so, after I’ve had time to do another read-through.

Don’wanna leave Scrivener…

In terms of tools, I wrote the last script in Word, and although that went fine, I wanted something that looked cleaner and more readable – in short, more like the comic scripts I’d seen in books. Not to mention: after doing all my substantial writing in Scrivener for ages, going back to Word felt downright odd.

Luckily I stumbled across the comic script template for Scrivener by Antony Johnston – it actually comes included with the Scrivener software, but Johnston’s article linked just then provides useful guidelines about how to use it. So now I can produce scripty-looking scripts and never leave Scrivener again. A dream fulfilled!

I picked a good time to make that change, as I think the more spaced-out scripting format might make the complex structure of this story come through better. I ended up including a brief note to the artist at the end to make sure all was clear, but at least I didn’t need to supply a diagram. Which, at times, I really thought I might.

So, first draft now done. It was a long job, and a lot might be changed or refined once I read it through in one clear sitting, as it was very bitty and might not yet flow well. Still, as with most writing, especially shorter pieces of work, having a draft to play with is half the battle. One more long afternoon of revisions and I think we’ll be there. Cool.

And if anyone else has any comics-process inspiration sources I should look at before tackling scripts again, do let me know in the comments. Enjoying this stuff a lot.

Man Vs Synopsis (WriteBlog #14)

by

In the near future, I am going to an event where I will be presenting a synopsis and a short sample of my novel to Important People. This, logically, means I will need to write a synopsis, which is what I’ve been doing for the last week. I have now completed a version I can read without wincing, so it’s time for the inevitable blog-hashing of what I feel I’ve learnt from this.

And for anyone who is actually worried, my synopsis itself does not feature in this post, so there will not be any spoilers for my half-edited unpublished novel about Satan. Furthermore, if you have a scary dream which you think would serve as a good ending, absolutely post details in the comments – there is still time for me to use it. Thanks.

A synopsis, for anyone who hasn’t run painfully into them, is a description of a novel from start to finish, trying to convey the beginning, middle and end of the story and make it sound amazing and be concise. Yes, it’s difficult.

It should not be confused with a “blurb” – that’s the text on the back of published books trying to persuade you to buy them. Blurbs (ideally) do not give away the ending. The aim with a synopsis is not yet to persuade a reader to buy my book, but to convince an agent/editor/publisher I know what I’m doing in terms of constructing a whole story.

So, that’s what they are and I’ve now written mine. Here, in no order, are the thoughts I had whilst doing so.

“…but seriously, it’s way better in the book!”

With a limited amount of space (many synopses only get a page to wow the reader), it’s pressuring to fit in a full, meaningful explanation of the depth and scope of your story. Even if your prose is beautifully written, trying to cram everything into a synopsis often leads to a childish odyssey of “…and then… and then… and then…”.

And this, sadly, can be especially true in sci-fi/fantasy, my chosen genre, where the need to explain how your “universe” works might crowd out the character stuff which is just as much (if not more) of a selling point than the amazing new type of orc/alien/boy wizard/vampire/detective you’ve made up.

Which led me to hours of thinking on how much exposition was necessary and trying to make myself keep a reasonable percentage of the character-important rambling, even though it was tempting to see that as filler and keep the worldbuilding. To be honest, a lot of the refining here will come when I show repeated versions to beta readers and ask them whether they understand it.

“…and then, in a brief subplot, Bob has colonic irrigation, and then…”

For those of us who write novels containing a wide range of characters and events, you gotta find yourself asking – how much of this must I cram into my one-pager? Does every subplot need at least a brief mention? Can I drop a few? If I can coherently describe the plot without mentioning Bob’s bum-washing storyline, is it possible it doesn’t really need to be there?

Yes, I had these thoughts. But if you think that’s bad, imagine the one-page synopsis of the longer George R.R. Martin novels, they must be nothing but brief words for a few main characters. Or perhaps they’re in 1-point font size, that wouldn’t entirely surprise me either.

Point being – yes, if you can effectively summarise your book without mentioning a subplot, it’s probably worth having the “Do we really need this?” chat with yourself, but don’t necessarily assume it means instant death. Like all good blog posts, I’m proposing we have a rule, but sensibly so.

“So the printer can print how close to the edge of the page, exactly?”

If nothing else, you can fit more words on the page by widening the margins. I wouldn’t usually propose such cheap tricks, but let’s be honest, this is summarising a single novel in one sheet, every pixel counts.

And that, folks, is everything that came to mind whilst writing my synopsis. If nothing else, it gave me an interesting high aerial view of my story and did lead me to solve a few problems along the way, so was a worthwhile exercise. Now, back to the actual editing.

When the going gets tough, Nick Bryan goes on Tumblr (WriteBlog #13)

by

I don’t know if I ever posted about this on here – I have a Tumblr account, it used to be my main website before I moved to this one. A couple of months ago, I chose a better theme and started using it in the same way as other Tumblrers do – mostly reblogging images and commenting below them. Feel free to follow if you like. A lot of it is comic-related, but sometimes not.

Anyway, I never started using it regularly – I had a starting spurt but died off. To be honest, Tumblr isn’t entirely my thing. I’m more a words person than a pictures one, and I don’t get emotionally attached to fictional characters in the animated-gif way. Until the last week or so, just as I reached the first genuinely hard part of my novel edits. What a remarkable coincidence.

It is not really a coincidence

After making the first three chapters worth of edits in a shade over a week, I wrote last week’s blog post, which was so positive, people have commented about it socially. Things were going well, and then I reached the fourth chapter, represented in my notes by a thick line with BIG CHANGES START HERE written along it.

What that means is: this is where I need to start heavily deviating from my original draft, rearranging plot points, writing lots of new scenes and taking stuff off in new directions. Yeah, I had a bit of a wobble. Partly laziness, partly intimidation at the scale of the task, partly fear that I wasn’t capable of it, probably some other things as well.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t leading up to And Then I Did Nothing All Week – I redid chapter four, it’s finished, but it took an eternity, I wasted probably the equivalent of a working day not just procrastinating on Twitter but turning regularly to Tumblr when I ran out of tweets to read (and that took a while).

It was just an extreme slow start, compounded by this being the week I had to draft the Hobson & Choi Extra Long 50th Chapter Extravaganza, which I’ve been looking forward to for ages and didn’t want to end up doing half-arsed. Still, in the end I rattled through two thirds of chapter four today and then worked out my revised outline for chapter five.

Things are happening, but there are even more severe edits coming, and if I’m going to get any momentum going, losing whole afternoons to social media isn’t really an option, especially when I already have to fit the editing around my day job, Hobson & Choi and having an actual life.

Basically, in short, what I’m saying is: if you see me post anything on Tumblr in the middle of a UK weekday, you’d probably be entirely justified in sending a message over telling me to get the hell back to work. Yeah.

Killing Your Darlings – They warned me it would be rough, but still… (WriteBlog #12)

by

Since last I WroteBlogged, I’ve been editing my novel first draft in a few large sessions, along with keeping up my regular commitments. Long story short, I’m now three chapters into the edit and if I continue at this pace, I may even have something available to discuss at the next writing group meeting, after several quiet sessions while I waited to be happy with stuff.

So, in a bid to make this an interactive shared learning experience, here are my observations/thoughts/feelings from one whole week of hacking at the early parts of a rough early novel manuscript.

The Greatest Struggle Is Within

To be honest, I’ve been what some call a “churner” in my writing. Historically, I’ve enjoyed the thrill of pounding out a first draft far more than the harder labour of going back, taking a wider view of said scrawl and hammering it into something people besides my Mum might want to read. (No offence, Mum. Please don’t stop reading the blog, I need your pageviews.)

But, as I’ve mused before, I think the current book has genuine potential and is in a not-too-awful state, so I should do my best to push through that barrier. That’s one of the reasons I’m persisting in these regular blogs if we’re being really honest – if I just don’t bother finishing after talking about it so much, I’ll feel like an utter nob.

So, I’m trying to focus on the creative fun parts of editing rather than the line-by-line torture: writing new subplots and chapters, fiddling with stuff to make other stuff work. So far, this has been a moderate success – although during one afternoon in which I had to write a slightly-different version of an existing scene because the old one just wasn’t salvageable, I did find my brain wandering away a little.

Still, today was great, I really felt the parts sliding together and I wasn’t even working on fresh material. Hopefully I’m finally getting to grips with the necessary attitude, and if not, I invite you all to come round my house and beat me soundly with sticks of bamboo.

Though Cutting Good Stuff Is A Bugger Too

I did read some blog posts about the editing process and a lot of them talk about the need to Kill Your Darlings. That’s a big buzzphrase. And no, it doesn’t refer to aspiring writers getting so frustrated with slow line-edits, they end up indulging in a killing spree – instead, it’s the need to often remove scenes or story features you really like because they don’t fit in/are superfluous to the rest of the piece.

I’ve had to do this a couple of times now, and let me tell you, the fact you may not get to read the scene where one of my characters sets their entire body on fire upsets me in a primal, spiritual way. There are other parts too, which had to die due to being pointless tangents.

I live in the quiet, perhaps desperate hope that I can fit some of the excised material into future work, but a lot of it is probably good for nothing else. Which is a shame as I loved writing a lot of it, I still remember the thrill of it first coming into existence. But I also know that the resultant story reads less like an unfocused “Yeah, let’s chuck that in” ramble now, which is kinda satisfying.

All of which is to say: those bloggers may have been right. Shame, I always hoped I was the special flower the common advice didn’t apply to. Bugger.Now, I’ve got 45 minutes spare so am going to start the edits on chapter four. I’m actually excited to do it too, which is nice. Maybe I’m getting somewhere with my internal struggle after all.

2014 Novel Edits – if only there were as few as that… (WriteBlog #11)

by

Tomorrow is my first full day of writing time since the Great Christmas Pause a few weeks ago. I have a quiet spell ahead, so I’m hoping to get a little start on my 2014 work. I figured this was probably a good time to get back into these writing blogs.

So, what does that mean? After months of musing, contemplating and general hoping for the best, time to finally start editing that novel I finished at the end of November. Shit.

Basically, aside from keeping up on my Hobson & Choi deadlines, my only hard goal for 2014, fiction-wise, is thus: get the modern-Faustian novel first draft up to a decent standard. I will settle for achieving this by the end of the year, but if I’m being honest, I’d quite like to manage it before that. How long is a reasonable amount of time to edit a 90,000ish word first draft into decent shape? I honestly don’t know, but a whole year seems like it should be enough, especially considering I don’t currently work full-time.

Keep in mind, I don’t intend to even send it out to beta readers until I’ve done one very full edit. I haven’t sat down and worked out the main changes yet, but I know it’ll involve shifting parts around and writing several whole new chapters. So there’s the first big rewrite, the pause while beta readers judge it, then the subsequent rewrites. Having typed that out, maybe I should prepare myself for it taking the whole year.

So, now that I’ve thought about what I’ll be doing in December 2014, let’s move back down to tomorrow. Keep it manageable, focus on goals you can really enact.

Tomorrow, once I’ve done enough H&C work to keep on target, I need a plan. If I’m going to get this done with any order and efficiency, I need to look over what I’ve got and try to create some kind of overview of what I’m trying to create, preferably accompanied by a list of what I need to do to achieve this. Part of me feels this is getting quite far off the Dream Creative Process but fuck that. Making it up as I go along has never led to my best work (and has also directly caused some of the problem in this very manuscript), so I’m going to avoid it.

I hope this slightly terrified download from my brain has struck a chord somewhere. I don’t pretend to be giving advice here, if anything I’m actively reaching out for it. If your own editing adventures have given you any insight into how I should go about this, share them in the comments (or use whichever of the contact methods listed here you like best) for god’s sake.

Oh, and readers of my unadvertised Christmas Day blog message may remember I mentioned ideas for the Next Novel. Those have been noted, and will now go totally ignored until I’ve got some kind of rhythm going on this editing.