Writing Update: Awful Intent

ByJohn Brown

Folks, I just finished the first draft of my working outline for AWFUL INTENT. I’m stoked. Lots of research and lots fun and sometimes maddening work to get to this point. Here’s the current version of the summary, which will change.

Southeastern Utah. 30,000 square miles of red-rock desert and wilderness.  One of the least populated places in the United States. The perfect place to hide just about anything.

Frank Shaw is just passing through. He was once an elite soldier, trained to see what others want to hide. Then he made some terrible mistakes and fell from grace. Except the old skills never went away: they were only heightened during his time behind bars. Which is why Frank notices the fearful woman in the McDonalds and the killer watching her. 

Frank could move on. He’s got a life to put together and a sandwich to buy. But some things are more important than a Big Mac. Frank follows the man who follows the woman, and that one decision leads Frank to a ranch that isn’t a ranch and into a plot of awful proportions.

When Frank and the strong female Sheriff from the small town a number of miles away discover the truth, they try to get back and call for help, but the rancher is on to them and sends a private army out to hunt them down in the wilderness. Frank and the Sheriff will need to use all their combined skills to survive. Because time is running out, and thousands of lives are at stake.

My agent got back to me on BAD PENNY. I will be focusing on some tweaks over the next two or three weeks. Then we need to get that moving forward.

Finally, I know some of you are wondering about the DARK GOD series. And why wouldn’t you be with my earlier post? Things haven’t been finalized. Soon, Grasshopper. Soon.

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    You’re invited to join the novel writing workshop pilot

    ByJohn Brown

    I am developing an online novel writing course and am looking for folks to pilot it with me and give me feedback. I’m thinking I want to limit it to 10-12 folks.

    It’s free and will probably take two or three months to complete. If you join, your job will be to do the work. And there will be work. I’m thinking 10-15 hours of work per week. Please don’t ask to join if you don’t want to make this commitment. I only want folks who are serious and ready to give this a shot. In addition to the work, you’ll need to report your experience with the course as we go, sharing with me where you get stuck, what’s confusing, what’s helpful, what does and doesn’t advance your skill. In fact, if at some point the course just isn’t providing you any value, you are welcome to drop. That’s good feedback too.

    It’s going to be a blended format that includes self-paced work and some type of weekly online meeting. I will be guiding the class. At the very least, we’ll meet and chat at my site. I don’t know if we’ll do a live meeting or not. Still working that out.

    I struggled for many years, trying to figure this stuff out, then had a number of epiphanies during Orson Card’s boot camp and continued from there. Of course I still have lots to learn. But I want to share what I have.

    I love teaching and have been teaching in one form or another for the last 20 years. I’m currently an education program manager at a large software firm. What this is all means is that I’m trying to build a course that guides folks through a process that will help them learn to WRITE novels. Not just talk about them.

    So this is not a series of lectures with quizzes that test your ability to recall, although I will quiz you.

    It’s not a course with an end goal of teaching you what I’ve learned about the concepts and principles of plot, character, and setting, although you will need to learn that.

    This is about increasing your ability to get ideas, develop them, and then write.

    It’s about doing the work. It’s about production. It’s about finishing product. And having a good time doing it.

    If you already feel comfortable with your ability to finish novels, this is NOT the course for you.

    You can learn more about the course here by clicking The Path in the On Writing menu.

    Probably the only other thing you need to know is that the class is a PG-13’ish class. While the stories can deal with intense and adult themes, as the teacher, I’m not interested in working with stories with explicit or detailed sex or lots of language of the sort that would earn a movie rating more restrictive than PG-13.

    Remember, this is a pilot. Even though I’ve taught about writing for a number of years to various audiences, there might be some rough spots. We might find we need to change the work requirements or activities or any number of things.

    If you’re interested, click on the Contact link on the menu of my site, and shoot me an email.

    Edit 1/30/15: I’m getting a number of excellent questions about the time commitment and schedule. Let me answer them here.

    The gap I’m trying to fill

    First, you have to understand that I am not interested in talking about novels and writing novels. I’m interested in helping folks finish novels. That’s a big gap I see in most writing instruction. It’s the gap I had. There was nobody to help me move from the theory to the writing, and writing all the way to the end. So this isn’t a class about novels. It’s a class where I hope to help you learn a number of techniques for developing and finishing one. And to learn those techniques, you have to actually use them. Which means you have to develop and finish a novel 🙂

    So why 10 hours as a minimum?

    If you’re a slower writer, it’s going to take you around 50 hours to develop and write a novel of 25,000 words. That’s the size of one of Louis L’Amour’s smaller novels (which we call sometimes call “novellas” today). It’s the size of some smaller romances. A lot of indies are writing serials around this size. If you want to write a 50k book, it’s probably 100 hours, maybe more. A 75k novel? 150-200 hours. The development and first draft of a 100k novel? 200-300 hours.

    These are not exact times. Some writers are faster. But you get the picture. Writing a novel is a big project. And I’ve found that it’s just too hard to get any traction on less than 10 hours per week. When you spend much less time than that, you spend most of your time just trying to remember what the story is about. I’ve found it’s best to keep your writing engine hot, or at least warm.

    So will these 10 hours be in meetings?

    No. I don’t want to have a lot of meetings. That’s the beauty of online. We will have deadlines. But you should be able to complete you work during the times that suit you best.

    What’s the course schedule?

    I can’t give you an exact schedule. I haven’t timed everything. Figuring that out is part of what we’re doing in this course. But I do know what I want you to learn and how I hope to help you learn it. We’ll just have to see how far we get with each weekly 10-hour chunk.

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    Writing update: brainstorming the ending of Curse

    ByJohn Brown

    I’ve had a number of people ask me where I am with the second book. I have the progress bars on the side, but they don’t give any details. So I thought I’d start up a semi-regular post that would be something like a writer’s journal. We’ll see how it goes.

    Right now I’m working on the climax of CURSE OF A DARK GOD. For the last two weeks I’ve been struggling trying to figure out the flow. I knew in general what I wanted to have happen. I had some images and the general feel–spectacle, revelation, battle at the fortress–knew I had to fulfill some expectations I’d raised with four characters. But I didn’t know the exact steps of the scene, the back and forth. I also hadn’t figured out the exact details of some of the magic that would be used.

    I outlined the objectives and plans of the two opposing warlords and then the steps of the scene. I listed my objectives for the scene. I do this sketching, sometimes exploratory drafts, to help bring the scene to life in my mind. I find that until a scene is alive in my mind, it’s impossible for me to write. Anyway, over the course of two weeks I went through six takes of the scene, and it still didn’t feel right. I won’t give the details and spoil the ending, but it just wasn’t there and I was getting frustrated. I’m behind on my deadlines and a book’s ending it critical. I talked a few things over with Nellie and made some headway, but it just wasn’t there.

    So I called a brainstorm meeting. I’ve never done this before for my writing work. I mean, I’ve bounced things off individuals (mostly Nellie) many times and found good resolutions, but I’ve never had a group. However, I felt I needed some extra input to get my mind going down new paths. Lenn Johnson, Amy and Alex Lamborn, and Miles and Becky Pinter came over. I borrowed a white board and easel from my church and made gingersnaps. When they arrived, I sat them around our kitchen table with Nellie and had them riff on one question while I captured their answers and ideas on the white board.

    It was incredibly productive. Partly because they came up with some great ideas I’m going to use. But also because it got me thinking in a new way which allowed me to come up with an idea that resolved the main issue I was dealing with. That was last Thursday. The next day I sat down and outlined a scene that did everything I wanted it to, including giving me the “oh, baby” feeling. It feels right. I have the spectacle, the revelation, the fulfillment to the expectations for the characters. I’m excited to write it. Which means I can now move forward. This week and next I hope to finish. After that there are a few small things I need to insert and clean up. Then it’s off to my editor.

    BTW, I did some calculations. For those interested, in this draft, the third, I ripped out 50% of the draft two and completely rewrote it. New problem and situation for two of my three points of view, major changes, etc. I heavily revised above 20% of the remaining 50%. I’ve put in a little over 500 hours working on this draft over the last six months.

    500 hours  (remember, I still have a day job).

    I am a slower writer than many. But it still would have been a huge task even if I could write twice as fast as I do. I think this is a perfect illustration of three things. First, if you don’t fix some things you feel are off when you find them, you might find you have a massive amount of rework later. Second, sometimes you don’t recognize you have those issues until you’re well into it. Third, writing requires the author to make time. I think this is the most important one. And the one that probably kills most aspiring writers. The fact is that if you can’t make time, you ain’t going to write 🙂

    Speaking of making time as a new artist, watch this interesting interview with author Scott Turow.

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    John guests on Writing Excuses season 3 episode 18

    ByJohn Brown

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    Here’s the second episode I recorded with the Writing Excuses guys.

    In the first podcast we talked about putting and not putting ourselves in our writing and making characters who don’t all sound like the author. In this one, we talked about how to not repeat ourselves in ways that make the reader feel like they’re getting the same old same old.

    As usual, the guys had some great insights. Check it out: How to Not Repeat Yourself.

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  • LA/Book 2, in which the novel kicks my butt

    ByJohn Brown

    I’ll make this short. I have a deadline for my next revision of CURSE OF A DARK GOD. It’s November 20th. But the book is kicking me around like a tin can. I sat down Saturday to work on my current revisions and as I unpicked the chapter I was working on the whole story unraveled in my hands. I worked for 8 hours trying to put it back together, but it resisted all efforts.

    I’m not one to take this lying down. I’m going to San Diego this week, but will fly back early to work on the book, which means I will not be visiting Los Angeles. Alas. This wild beast will come under control. And that should please all those who have read SERVANT and are waiting for the next installment.

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