Organizing a Novel

 by Sabra Wineteer

Moving from line editing a complete novel to drafting a new one feels weird. Very weird. But not at first.

At first, drafting new material is what it is. I'd sit down and have an idea for a scene and just start typing away. During the course of writing, a new idea, wonderful turns of phrases, and lyrical language would come seemingly out of nowhere. (It's not nowhere, but the steady practice of writing on a regular basis that hones the work. But that's a subject for another time.) I was able to do this unimpeded for about 20,000 words into this new novel. And then the thing got unwieldy.

The more I wrote, the more I sensed that organization was needed. I had a think for several days about the structure, decided I wanted to have two main character POVs with both present and past tense narratives and some other material providing information for my reader. That got me through the next 10,000 words. But at 30,000 words drafted, I knew I couldn't put it off any more- I'd have to actually have some organizing scheme.

In the past, I've tried two different ways- outlining and note cards. Outlining works well for straight forward linear single POV narratives. At least, it did for me. But once two time frames are added or more than one POV, things can get confusing. I'm also not a linear thinker. My mind doesn't work that way; I'm a whole picture kind of person. It's one main reason I'm a novelist at heart. Most, if not all, of a novel comes to me in a short amount of time. I'm not one to have an initial idea and write my way through it to the end. Three-quarters to a whole novel come to me while I'm drafting the first quarter of a novel and then I have to write the various pieces together until they fit right. It's one reason I rely on note cards. I can write scenes in my non-linear thinking way and then rearrange them until I build appropriate plot tension. Perhaps not the most efficient way to work, but it's how my mind and narrative inclination operates.

For my current work-in-progress novel, I decided to go back to the note cards. This time, however, I was going to be ultra organized about it. With two main POVs, two time frames, and that third narrative factor, I need more information at a single glance than I ever needed before. So I devised a template:

As you can see, the upper right is the point-of-view. Here I simply put in the first name initial of one of my two main characters.

On the opposite side the tense- past or present.

In the middle, I leave myself room to write the gist of the scene at hand.

Down on the bottom, I have a place for the date. Mind you, this is mainly for my benefit. I don't intend to label each and every scene with a date for my readers. As long as I know the date, the month, the season, etc. and I make sure that I write in narrative time markers/transitions, my reader will get a sense of the novel's time without having to be banged over the head with an actual date or time. They don't need to know Scene A occurs on August 4th at 11:52 PM in that way.

"Location" on the bottom right is also mainly for my benefit. One of my main characters takes a long journey on foot and I need to know how far he will walk on any given day. As I added this to my template card, I thought of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Jude always seemed to be walking and I wonder if Hardy, like me, took out maps to visualize and mark his character's treks.

The bottom center contains other relevant information to help me keep my novel straight. Again, the distance thing is related to how far one of my main characters has ventured from his starting point.

As I continue to add scenes to this narrative and my word count rises by thousands of words, I know I might add other information to my cards. But not too much, the only spaces left on the cards are the right and left centers, so whatever organizing factors I might need as I continue drafting will have to stay at one or two markers.

With the narrative unfolding with each word I type, I know I'll eventually take out my note cards and fiddle with the order. I may simply stack them and go through them over and over to see if it feels right. Once I think I've got the sense of it, I'll lay them out first to last and see if my gut has any objections.

Novel writing's a messy business, but with some organizing tools such as note cards, it eventually cleans up and comes together.

Do you use an organizing scheme with your novel? A binder, an outline, note cards, a flow chart? Have you tried some and find they didn't fit? What tried and true methods have worked for you?

Photo by Curt Richter

Sabra Wineteer grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. She has since lived in England, New Zealand, Germany, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and currently lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their three tweens. Her work has appeared in TWINS Magazine, storySouth, The Rumpus, 7X20, and the anthology 140 And Counting. She has workshopped her fiction with Antonya Nelson, Charles D'Ambrosio, and Margaret Atwood. She is the 2012 Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award recipient and founder of Talking Shop, an upcoming online literary community. She's shopping a social realism novel and drafting her next- a speculative dystopian literary novel.

Cheating on NaNoWriMo, Again

by Sabra Wineteer

I am going to cheat on NaNoWriMo. Again. I've done it before. Two years ago when I needed to take an editing break from a work-in-progress novel and switch gears like the best of us.

Last time, I got a fair way into a novel that has yet come to nothing. There is sometimes a point in a writer's development in which ambition outweighs ability. This was the case with this "cheater" novel. I kept bringing in elements, not small little things that are quirky, interesting, and help to flesh out a character, but premise bending sorts of elements. Not to say that the novel's a mess, but it's got a lot of plates spinning, has a wonderful riff about London and the English language sort of thing. Bill Clegg would love it. But I didn't or probably still don't have the ability to pull together so many themes. I also fell out of love with it and have moved on.

This time, I'm cheating the same way I did last time. I'm not starting from scratch. Words are drafted. Thousands of words. Scenes are noted. I've invested in copious amounts of books to learn more about the world my characters will inhabit. According to the NaNoWriMo guidelines, this is a sort of cheating. Worse, I'm starting early. This week I have finished final edits (at least before an agent and/or editor gets hold of it) on a social realism novel. My speculative dystopian novel, now moves up in the world, becomes my work-in-progress novel. And for weeks this novel has been in the back of my mind, scenes coming to me while I walk the dog or take a bath or at night when I dream. I'm going to love on it now. This is early for NaNoWriMo. This is cheating on NaNoWriMo. Worst, I've already "workshopped" this novel. At least the first part of the first chapter. I've already edited it instead of doing a full on drafting blitz. NaNoWriMo is a drafting orgy.

 And I don't care that I'm cheating on NaNoWriMo. This novel has been crying out for attention for far too long for me to ignore it for another two weeks. So I won't. Call me cheater, cheater pumpkin eater. Or become my writing buddy and we'll cheer each other on, cheating or not. And let me know if you've ever done NaNoWriMo, especially if you've cheated on it.

*NOTE about my user name- dorcasweed- on NaNoWriMo. Dorcas Weed is such a bad name it's not just good, it's great. Dorcas Weed is also my oldest American female ancestor. At least that I've discovered. She was born in 1640 in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Wethersfield was a new Puritan colony founded by her parents, parents-in-law, and others.

Photo by Curt Richter

Sabra Wineteer grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. She has since lived in England, New Zealand, Germany, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and currently lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their three tweens. Her work has appeared in TWINS Magazine, storySouth, The Rumpus, 7X20, and the anthology 140 And Counting. She has workshopped her fiction with Antonya Nelson, Charles D'Ambrosio, and Margaret Atwood. She is the 2012 Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award recipient and founder of Talking Shop, an upcoming online literary community. She's shopping a social realism novel and drafting her next- a speculative dystopian literary novel.

Narrative Transitions

 by Sabra Wineteer

I can’t stand novels that jump forward or back time without a few markers or anchoring descriptions. Perhaps it’s a literary pet peeve or something I find aesthetically annoying, or it could be I lack mental acuity or am too muddled in my daily life to suss out broad leaps in narrative time. But I read a lot and when authors do this it never fails to irk me.

When I’m reading a novel and this happens, I muddle through a couple three sentences thinking, “What?” As Margaret Atwood proclaimed, “Don’t give readers a what moment.” These transitions (or really the lack of them) pull me out of the narrative and, thus, the enjoyment of the book. “Where am I?” I wonder. “When am I?” “Which character am I with?” I don’t find it clever, or twee, or avant-garde to jack a reader around this way. This is either subterfuge on the part of an evil dictator author or laziness. And whatever the reason, I have to reread these sentences until I get the author’s gist- yes, we’ve moved a decade forward in time and now Joe is the point-of-view character.

Films don’t make jarring jumps in time, at least the well made ones don’t. I think of the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle). Because the narrative of the story takes place over many months and sometimes there’s not much going on between say summer and the following spring, the film shows us the passage of a great deal of time very quickly. For instance, we see Elizabeth on one of her walks, her bonnet is tight, she wears a long sleeved jacket with gloves. As she walks, we see that the leaves on the trees are different colors- red, orange, yellow. And if we, as viewers, are in any doubt about this big shift forward in time, the film bangs it home. We hear squawking, as does Elizabeth, and we see her look up as the camera angles to the sky. There are geese, V-flying south. Autumn. And that's all we get in scene for the whole season. Then the film moves onto winter, the Bennet's holed up in their house, frost on the windows, Mr. Bingley likely gone from Netherfield forever.

In her last novel, "The Years", Virginia Woolf employs these transitions. She’s quite fond of them and spends several paragraphs of each chapter making such openings. For instance, these are the hallmarks she gives at the very beginning of the novel.

1880

It was an uncertain spring. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and of purple flying over the land. In the country farmers, looking at the fields, were apprehensive; in London umbrellas were opened and then shut by people looking up at the sky. But in April such weather was to be expected.

This is just a little taste of her opening setting-the-scene paragraph; it goes on for 445 words.

Seventy-five years after "The Years" was published, we don’t have much tolerance (or attention span) for such lengthy expositions, but that doesn’t mean authors shouldn’t employ them. I keep a calendar for my characters- Thursday, December 23, 1999- trip to the OVR- so that I know at any given point, in any given scene, I know exactly what day my character occupies. I like using this site to give me the days of the week and the dates.  It might not seem vital, but in the case of the above example, I wanted a day close to Christmas, but not when this particular office, the OVR, would be closed. (I even called the office itself and learned that they are never open on Christmas Eve, even if it falls on a weekday. Thus, it had to be December 23^rd or earlier.) Though I don't give the date of this scene, I do mention that "Christmas is the day after tomorrow." I hope in doing so that my readers are anchored in time and the many transitions I have during the part of the novel don't give anyone any what moments.

Authors can also show years pass in mere sentences. As a personal preference, I LOVE this. The most elegant way I’ve ever seen this done was with Gloria Naylor’s "The Women of Brewster Place." In one particular scene she is showing not only many years passing, but a character growing up. She narrates this scene cinematically. We have an unchangeable anchor, a chair, and we have the passage of time shown by the son’s legs lengthening (growing, he's aging) in comparison to this inanimate object.

Another reason I prefer these transitions is that I’m fond of cliff-hangerish chapter endings. Like a roller coaster, we can’t always be rising to the top of the structure. And we can’t be forever cresting over the edge. And no matter how hard gravity pulls us back down, there’s a bottom somewhere. There’s got to be some level bits in there, even if there are curves. So, for those suspenseful chapter endings, or even when there’s an emotional blow, revelation, or narrative bang, I like a little smoothness to even me back out before the tension builds again.

So more transitions, please. Anchor me and other readers in the who, when, and where before moving into the what and how. I know I'd be grateful.

Photo by Curt Richter

Sabra Wineteer grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. She has since lived in England, New Zealand, Germany, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and currently lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their three tweens. Her work has appeared in TWINS Magazine, storySouth, The Rumpus, 7X20, and the anthology 140 And Counting. She has workshopped her fiction with Antonya Nelson, Charles D'Ambrosio, and Margaret Atwood. She is the 2012 Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award recipient and founder of Talking Shop, an upcoming online literary community. Her current work-in-progress novel is complete and almost finished.

Noveling

by Sabra Wineteer

Recently, I was working with my three homeschooled children on a literary analysis essay- why Lois Lowry’s The Giver is a dystopian novel. None of them were really keen on the idea of multiple drafts and I had an epiphany. On the dry erase board, I wrote the subject at hand— Writing. I asked them, when we add and subtract, multiply and divide, we’re doing what? “Math,” they answered. “Right, we’re not mathing are we?” And then I went through the various other subjects— Science vs. Sciencing, Social Studies vs. Social Studying. Only Reading gets the same progressive verb ending as Writing. And my son brought up that this meant that the action was ongoing.

This is one reason I’ve taken to the word noveling. There’s just so much involved in a single novel— research, characterization, dialogue, plot, setting, writing, revising, editing, etc. One doesn’t simply write a novel and working on a novel sounds like a hobby thing to do. The solution? Noveling.

As of this moment, I am thoroughly revising a social realism novel. I am at the 35,005^th word of an “Atwood edit.” Exactly how many words this novel will have is TBD as a thorough revision means adding (and subtracting) a great deal. This novel’s complete, however—has its beginning, middle, and end and these various parts have been revised and edited thoroughly before. Way, way many times before. But two more revisions— the “Atwood edit” and a “dream agent” edit— and I will have taken it as far as I can.

As of this moment, a dystopian speculative novel is waiting its turn. I have drafted some on it. Edited a bit of it. Even “workshopped” the first pages of it with Margaret Atwood. While I’m doing the dishes or walking the dog, I “get” or “see” or imagine scenes for it. Mostly, though, I’m just thinking about it. Taking to heart what Atwood wrote in a note at the end of Oryx and Crake, “What if we continue on the path we’re already on?” and trying to imagine that future.

As of this moment, I’m Jonesing to research another novel idea. There’s a world I long to immerse myself in. Research and travel and probably some translators will be needed. But the seeds for this novel are strong and they’re taking root. I have to keep them buried until I can shine some light on them.

As of this moment, a kernel of a Young Adult novel is in my head. Maybe it’ll go somewhere. Maybe it won’t. I don’t know yet. I’ll know better when I’m thoroughly revising some previous thought of and more worked out novel and start seeing scenes or getting lines or a character starts demanding attention.

So, there are all these things going on in my head all at once. After I finish writing this blog piece, I’m going to tackle the 35,006^th+ words of my completed, but not finished social realism novel. Line editing, rearranging scenes, better transitions, thinking about cuts and working out additions. There are the novel ideas that are waiting in the wings that so often come to me unbidden. How do I describe this process? Working on a novel? Writing a novel (when writing is such a tiny little bit of it)? Revising and editing and re- so much of it— reworking, reordering, re-editing, replacing, etc. a novel? There are simply too many parts to the whole of this novel writing thing. So, I’m noveling. I can’t put it any other way. 

Photo by Curt Richter

Sabra Wineteer grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. She has since lived in England, New Zealand, Germany, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and currently lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their three tweens. Her work has appeared in TWINS Magazine, storySouth, The Rumpus, 7X20, and the anthology 140 And Counting. She has workshopped her fiction with Antonya Nelson, Charles D'Ambrosio, and Margaret Atwood. She is the 2012 Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award recipient and founder of Talking Shop, an upcoming online literary community. Her current work-in-progress novel is complete and almost finished.

Novel Conception

by Sabra Wineteer

Writing’s a lonely business. At least, it is for me. Long ago, I scrapped my notions of getting an MFA and I have no regrets. See, in my heart of hearts, soul of souls, down to the marrow of my bones, I’m a novelist. And, well, novels and creative writing workshop settings don’t always go so well together. So, it seems to me that novel writing’s an even lonelier business.

I have written two complete novels. One is failed (though sometimes I imagine that should new novel ideas cease to come to me, I’ll revisit it) and one is a current work-in-progress I hope to have finished by New Year’s Day 2013. I’ve made mistakes along the way. Not putting it in a drawer/filing it away/not looking at it for long enough before I showed it to others. Or querying literary agents before it was ready, before I was ready.

And no matter how better I’m getting, how quickly and well I can draft the first time around, or how thoroughly I edit and revise, or how much I’ve learned, I don’t feel less lonely. It’s only in talking with other novelists, aspiring and publishing, that I feel less on my own. Commiseration and camaraderie are invaluable when toiling away in metaphorical garrets.

So, I started this blog in order to bring together the writer friends I know who are in various stages of this process. From published debut novelist Rayme Waters, to an editor of her own press, Joanne Merriam, to aspiring novelists beginning the adventure of putting together tens of thousands of words into something worthwhile and artistic, we are coming together to commiserate and inspire. I hope to meet some new novelists along the way and that our group blog and our lonely novelist struggles will be helpful to others. 

Photo by Curt Richter

Sabra Wineteer grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. She has since lived in England, New Zealand, Germany, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and currently lives in rural Pennsylvania with her husband and their three tweens. Her work has appeared in TWINS Magazine, storySouth, The Rumpus, 7X20, and the anthology 140 And Counting. She has workshopped her fiction with Antonya Nelson, Charles D'Ambrosio, and Margaret Atwood. She is the 2012 Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award recipient and founder of Talking Shop, an upcoming online literary community.