Most writing books tell us that we must answer all of the clue/mystery questions before the end of the book, otherwise we are 'cheating' the reader who has worked so hard to discover the 'truth.' I totally disagree with this. Some of the best mysteries I have read do not answer every question the reader might have. An example is Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. We know very little about Reacher and this is a lot of the appeal of this particular character. There are many mystery books where all of the events aren't explained. A devil unseen might be a lot more frightening than one we come to know too well in the last chapter -- only to discover he/she/it is a large bear/grasshopper/old lady with a sharp-pointed umbrella. As for peculiarities a character might have, I think Aunt Edna is a lot more appealing if we don't know why she hates young children, screams at cops, but stops and hugs every small animal she passes. I think fiction is best if it imitates real life. You can know someone for forty years and continually get surprised. Why should fiction be any different?
Thanks for visiting. Another man who likes his stories loose. :~
Personally, I don't think I'd like too much loose fiction. I don't really want reality, I don't think — maybe that's why I like reading crime fiction — it has resolution. Hmmm. Could it be that asking about clues and resolution will show the great divide in readers' tastes? I guess we'll have to see . . . :party:
Thanks so much for visiting. Of course software is never going to replace a good solid grounding in reality. ;)
And I personally am very glad for youse guys. As you read my earlier blog post, you KNOW that I got all straightened up as soon as my story met with some real police officers. :)
To keep this on blog topic, for those of us who like puzzle-solving as a major aspect of reading crime fiction, tidying up clues is a pretty necessary item. The story sometimes feels unfinished — faulty — if the clues are left dangling.
One thing that bothers me about crime fiction is that every i is crossed and every t is dotted. There are red herrings, to be sure, but most are transparent. In Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, you never know for sure if there even was a real bejeweled bird figurine and that's a subtle yet important element of the book. In The Big Sleep, the killing of the chauffeur is never solved. It gives the mood of the book another level of ambiguity (even if Chandler forgot to include the solution he never created for it). The other thing that bothers me is that the murders are always solved. What's the point of being realistic with ballistics, DNA, bottle fly larvae and the like if we can't write a compelling story based on the idea that some people do in fact get away with murder?
Your software sounds fascinating, but I think it's also indispensable to cover a base you addressed in an earlier post (last month or even more ago). No matter how far from reality you're going to stray - and that can be as far as you want in fiction, really - you have to have a good grounding in reality to depart from it. You mentioned that talking to a detective "shot your story full of holes." That was a GOOD thing. Logic isn't abstract, it's also conditional to context, and if you don't have a feel for your context from your own experience, the next best thing is the experience of others.
Many, many people have asked me for "the facts" about how the FBI works a case, but there are an infinite number of possible answers based on specific questions. In addition, there is a multilayered cultural aspect to any real world situation that can certainly be greatly tweaked by a fiction author, but is less convincing - or compelling - the further away from reality you get.
Just so we retired law enforcement/counterintelligence types never feel irrelevant! :)
Theresa, MS Word has a feature named Document Map that is a window on the left side. For it to work, you assign Heading styles to your chapters and (temporary) subchapters. For example, the title of Chapteri 1 could be Meet Ralph & Coworkers with Heading Style 1. (Before submitting, you would of course change the title to plain old Chapter 1.) You can jump from chapter to chapter by clicking on the Document Map on the left.
In addition, you can add (temporary) subtitles, such as Ralph Argues with Leonore, a scene in Chapter 1. Give the subtitle Heading Style 2 and it will show up indented under the chapter title. That way, you can jump to specific scenes.
Word has a true outline feature which is handy for major reorganizations. Again, the heading styles help greatly with this.
Word is not the easiest tool ever, especially with that acursed ribbon instead of pull-down menus (the 2007 version), but I've found that most of the ire directed toward it is associated with not knowing it very well. That said, I encourage you on your mission!
yWriter is a really interesting freeware available for download from SpaceJockey (http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html). The interface is not fancy, but the layout and format is pretty self-explanatory. I really like the character bio format, and the scene/chapter outlining is great. It also has story board functions that I've only begun to play with. I haven't been using it for long, but it appears to be a very good tool for a writer (especially a beginning writer) because it provides a logical framework for story-telling, including outlining scenes, with characters, motivations, etc.
My one problem, and one I hope to overcome, as I think it's all in my head, is that the format of the actual story writing (in seperate scenes, and not on one large document) trips me up. However, overall, I think it is a great tool. And the best part is that it's free!
Thanks for coming back. I hate to be tantalizing because these are some of the difficulties, I no longer have. ;)
L.J. says, in the comments on this blog post, that she does 3 rewrites total (unless an agent/editor asks for more), and as you can tell from her blog post, she's a very organized person. Personally, I've got a more amorphous process for the evolution of the story, and there are a lot of things I haven't decided yet, even though I'm well through various parts of the story. (But, then again, I no longer HAVE to decide those things to move on with the story—so I haven't). But before I had this tool, like you, I discovered a need to change something substantial in the story (see my blog post about Revision).
The difficulty in pulling apart the story, putting it together again, even simply searching for something, drove me nuts. J)
As you'll discover, if you bop around this site, I was fortunate enough to be able to do something successful about my frustrations with trying to search for data in my story. Sadly, we're a little distance away from making those same tools available to others.
But, I hope you'll come back to discuss more about your issues and desires. By the way, in case this might be of interest, I did a survey recently of a couple of online writing groups and fully 10% of the users were still using Word Perfect. You might need to import your Word Perfect file into Word in order to send it out in .rtf, but you should still be able to work in Word Perfect if you choose. :)
Happy Sunday to you, it's very wet where I am.
Theresa
(formerly "Anonymous") For me it always starts with the characters. I list them, then build character sketches for each one. How much detail depends on the size of the character's role. I use Word for this (although I used to use WordPerfect which I prefer; unfortunately the rest of the world seems to function in Word.) I'll open another document and do the same for the details of my setting. I outline my plot with a timeline which I build in Excel. Even though my actual story usually takes place in only a few days, my timeline can cover years, sometimes decades, depending on how much backstory I need to know. At this point I usually begin the actual writing. If that goes well, I'm away, but usually I reach a snag in the story that forces me back to my timeline. I may pull the bothersome section out and expand on it (using Word) until the plot problem is resolved.
I wish I could say I was happy with this process but I'm not. It's very difficult to search for details (about a character, for instance) and it's very difficult to update if I decide to make a major change part way through the writing. I'm in the early stages of a new novel and I'm trying to use OneNote to organize the prep material. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is a new program for me and I'm finding it a bit challenging.
I almost always work in the same file for the second draft. By then the story is set, and it's simply a matter of modification. I add some scenes, but mostly I add detail, smooth things out and look for inconsistencies. I never write by hand unless I'm out and about and think of something I want to add. Typically, it takes me three drafts to have a finished product ... unless an agent or editor wants to make major changes, then it requires more.
Can you tell us a bit more about how you do rewrites? You mention in #11 about the second draft. Do you use the same computer file for the second draft, or do you completely retype the document? How many drafts does it take you to complete the story? When you rewrite scenes, if you do, do you rewrite inside the same document or outside in a fresh, white space?
And, is all your writing done on the computer or do you do any by hand (the old fashioned way)?
Yes, searching for something in 90K words is a pretty tough proposition. In my current setup, I can find things much better than I could before, but that's a subject for another post. :)
Thanks so much for this! My process is similar (outlines/character sketches/spreadsheets/timelines.) I sometimes wonder if I'm burying myself in the details but if I try to write without this foundation in place, the work is filled with holes and inconsistencies. I've worked with Excel for many years and while it really isn't a database program, I'm comfortable with it and can tweak it to suit my needs.I've recently acquired OneNote and I can see that, once I become more familiar with its features, it will also be a valuable organizing tool.
Jen, I wish you had a login, then I would know I was writing to you :love:
I'm using Access right now to manage the story I'm writing (read:rewriting). Look on the main page of this website, click Home for my blog, then and click About Us to see more about how we came to use Access. As time goes on, I'll be posting more about exactly what we've done with it! :davie:
If you decide you want to make yourself a login, use the Links button in the black menu bar at the top of the page, or send an email using the Contact button to tell me what's not working. Or you can sign in with OpenID, google it to find out more.
By the way, you still didn't say exactly what you were putting into your Access database for your website. ;)
I'm an Access junkie! Anytime I want to collect data, I usually do it in Access. You can keep almost anything in it. I made a database recently at work where I'm keeping the information on participants in our online classes. I can keep track of their personal data as well as what classes they took from us, what roles they had in the class (coach, participant), what section of the class they took, etc.
I also created a movie database. That's still very much a work in process, but using the database I can opt to look up who was in a movie or going from the other direction I can look up what movies an actor has been in.
And address book is really great in a database, too. And with that format you can keep more than address and phone number. You can also keep track of who you sent Christmas cards to, birthdates, family members, most anything you would want to relate to the people in your book.
When you have more three-dimensional data, a database gives you a lot more flexibility that a spreadsheet and you don't have to end up repeating data. A well-built database requires you to save a piece of data in only one place but access it in multiple ways.
In my jobs I've worked with many databases, but Access is great for small or personal databases. It's not difficult to use at all. If you're going to house the Internet Movie Database (imbd.com), you would need something more than Access. But for my purposes, it's fantastic.
I've been to your site and read a couple of book reviews, nice site! I'm curious; what exactly are you using Access for? I guess you're keeping track of authors and book titles, but what else?
I like your idea about the character database. I don't write myself, but I have been working on building a database in Access (you sound like you've created a spreadsheet) to track not only characters but also books, authors, etc. My main purpose to develop would be for a reference tool for my blogging. Access is also a GREAT tool!
I have Word 2003 and it doesn't have the Notebook feature. I wish it did. More and more, I'm considering switching to Mac with the next hard drive crash. I, for sure, would like to try the Notebook feature.
You are very organized, L.J. Personally, I think being organized frees up the creativity.
I think most of the software advertised in writing magazines has story development capabilities. I've never felt a need for that. I'd rather plot my own stories in my own twisted way.
Many writers seem unhappy with the software available to them. There was quite a discussion recently on Murder Must Advertise about this subject. There was a lot of agreement that the new version of Word is worse than the previous one (and is hated by some), but it wasn't very clear what writers expect software to do that it's not doing now. I suspect some writers are looking for more organizational capabilities. Overall, I'm pretty happy with Word. My first short stories were done on a typewriter, and I wrote my first novel on a Brother word processor, so I feel spoiled now. Sometimes I wish I had a better search function. There are times when I'm looking for a sentence or section in my novel, but if I don't remember the exact way I keyed part of it in, then the Find function is useless. If Find in Word worked more like Google, that would be awesome.
I find it interesting that you do not mention the writing software advertised at the magazines for writers. Have you tried them and found them unsatisfactory, or did you prefer to seek tools you knew you wanted?
What I know is that the Mac 2004 & 2008 Word versions have it, but earlier versions in Windows do not. When the Notebook Layout icon is clicked, the file converts to what looks like a lined notebook page. As you fill the page it just keeps going without any page breaks, like an endless notebook. There are also vertical tabs along the right side of the file that you can label (Outline, Questions, Evidence). When you click a tab, a new lined notebook page opens. So you can click back and forth between different chunks of information very quickly. For me, it combines what used to be four or five separate documents into one, with easy access to all my notes. So now I keep fewer documents open when I'm working on a novel and spend less time looking for specific information.
Since your day-job version of Word doesn't have the Notebook Layout Tool, what versions of Word have you checked? Would you recommend someone upgrade their Word version?
Can you tell us a bit more about your organizational methods for this tool? I.e. for those of us who've never seen it, or your working environment, we (at least I) have difficulty visualizing exactly how it's used. When the icon is clicked, what happens? Does it provide an electronic 3x5 card kinda thing? Can you divide things into categories? Could you give us some examples of how you use the tool?
Most writing books tell us that we must answer all of the clue/mystery questions before the end of the book, otherwise we are 'cheating' the reader who has worked so hard to discover the 'truth.' I totally disagree with this. Some of the best mysteries I have read do not answer every question the reader might have. An example is Lee Child's Jack Reacher series. We know very little about Reacher and this is a lot of the appeal of this particular character. There are many mystery books where all of the events aren't explained. A devil unseen might be a lot more frightening than one we come to know too well in the last chapter -- only to discover he/she/it is a large bear/grasshopper/old lady with a sharp-pointed umbrella. As for peculiarities a character might have, I think Aunt Edna is a lot more appealing if we don't know why she hates young children, screams at cops, but stops and hugs every small animal she passes. I think fiction is best if it imitates real life. You can know someone for forty years and continually get surprised. Why should fiction be any different?
Ah William,
Thanks for visiting. Another man who likes his stories loose. :~
Personally, I don't think I'd like too much loose fiction. I don't really want reality, I don't think — maybe that's why I like reading crime fiction — it has resolution. Hmmm. Could it be that asking about clues and resolution will show the great divide in readers' tastes? I guess we'll have to see . . . :party:
Dear anonymous retired law enforcement person,
Thanks so much for visiting. Of course software is never going to replace a good solid grounding in reality. ;)
And I personally am very glad for youse guys. As you read my earlier blog post, you KNOW that I got all straightened up as soon as my story met with some real police officers. :)
To keep this on blog topic, for those of us who like puzzle-solving as a major aspect of reading crime fiction, tidying up clues is a pretty necessary item. The story sometimes feels unfinished — faulty — if the clues are left dangling.
Hey,
One thing that bothers me about crime fiction is that every i is crossed and every t is dotted. There are red herrings, to be sure, but most are transparent. In Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, you never know for sure if there even was a real bejeweled bird figurine and that's a subtle yet important element of the book. In The Big Sleep, the killing of the chauffeur is never solved. It gives the mood of the book another level of ambiguity (even if Chandler forgot to include the solution he never created for it). The other thing that bothers me is that the murders are always solved. What's the point of being realistic with ballistics, DNA, bottle fly larvae and the like if we can't write a compelling story based on the idea that some people do in fact get away with murder?
William
Essays and Ramblings
http://www.williamahearn.com
Hi Theresa,
Your software sounds fascinating, but I think it's also indispensable to cover a base you addressed in an earlier post (last month or even more ago). No matter how far from reality you're going to stray - and that can be as far as you want in fiction, really - you have to have a good grounding in reality to depart from it. You mentioned that talking to a detective "shot your story full of holes." That was a GOOD thing. Logic isn't abstract, it's also conditional to context, and if you don't have a feel for your context from your own experience, the next best thing is the experience of others.
Many, many people have asked me for "the facts" about how the FBI works a case, but there are an infinite number of possible answers based on specific questions. In addition, there is a multilayered cultural aspect to any real world situation that can certainly be greatly tweaked by a fiction author, but is less convincing - or compelling - the further away from reality you get.
Just so we retired law enforcement/counterintelligence types never feel irrelevant! :)
Theresa, MS Word has a feature named Document Map that is a window on the left side. For it to work, you assign Heading styles to your chapters and (temporary) subchapters. For example, the title of Chapteri 1 could be Meet Ralph & Coworkers with Heading Style 1. (Before submitting, you would of course change the title to plain old Chapter 1.) You can jump from chapter to chapter by clicking on the Document Map on the left.
In addition, you can add (temporary) subtitles, such as Ralph Argues with Leonore, a scene in Chapter 1. Give the subtitle Heading Style 2 and it will show up indented under the chapter title. That way, you can jump to specific scenes.
Word has a true outline feature which is handy for major reorganizations. Again, the heading styles help greatly with this.
Word is not the easiest tool ever, especially with that acursed ribbon instead of pull-down menus (the 2007 version), but I've found that most of the ire directed toward it is associated with not knowing it very well. That said, I encourage you on your mission!
yWriter is a really interesting freeware available for download from SpaceJockey (http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html). The interface is not fancy, but the layout and format is pretty self-explanatory. I really like the character bio format, and the scene/chapter outlining is great. It also has story board functions that I've only begun to play with. I haven't been using it for long, but it appears to be a very good tool for a writer (especially a beginning writer) because it provides a logical framework for story-telling, including outlining scenes, with characters, motivations, etc.
My one problem, and one I hope to overcome, as I think it's all in my head, is that the format of the actual story writing (in seperate scenes, and not on one large document) trips me up. However, overall, I think it is a great tool. And the best part is that it's free!
Kenna
Hi Ilonka,
Thanks for coming back. I hate to be tantalizing because these are some of the difficulties, I no longer have. ;)
L.J. says, in the comments on this blog post, that she does 3 rewrites total (unless an agent/editor asks for more), and as you can tell from her blog post, she's a very organized person. Personally, I've got a more amorphous process for the evolution of the story, and there are a lot of things I haven't decided yet, even though I'm well through various parts of the story. (But, then again, I no longer HAVE to decide those things to move on with the story—so I haven't). But before I had this tool, like you, I discovered a need to change something substantial in the story (see my blog post about Revision).
The difficulty in pulling apart the story, putting it together again, even simply searching for something, drove me nuts. J)
As you'll discover, if you bop around this site, I was fortunate enough to be able to do something successful about my frustrations with trying to search for data in my story. Sadly, we're a little distance away from making those same tools available to others.
But, I hope you'll come back to discuss more about your issues and desires. By the way, in case this might be of interest, I did a survey recently of a couple of online writing groups and fully 10% of the users were still using Word Perfect. You might need to import your Word Perfect file into Word in order to send it out in .rtf, but you should still be able to work in Word Perfect if you choose. :)
Happy Sunday to you, it's very wet where I am.
Theresa
(formerly "Anonymous") For me it always starts with the characters. I list them, then build character sketches for each one. How much detail depends on the size of the character's role. I use Word for this (although I used to use WordPerfect which I prefer; unfortunately the rest of the world seems to function in Word.) I'll open another document and do the same for the details of my setting. I outline my plot with a timeline which I build in Excel. Even though my actual story usually takes place in only a few days, my timeline can cover years, sometimes decades, depending on how much backstory I need to know. At this point I usually begin the actual writing. If that goes well, I'm away, but usually I reach a snag in the story that forces me back to my timeline. I may pull the bothersome section out and expand on it (using Word) until the plot problem is resolved.
I wish I could say I was happy with this process but I'm not. It's very difficult to search for details (about a character, for instance) and it's very difficult to update if I decide to make a major change part way through the writing. I'm in the early stages of a new novel and I'm trying to use OneNote to organize the prep material. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is a new program for me and I'm finding it a bit challenging.
I almost always work in the same file for the second draft. By then the story is set, and it's simply a matter of modification. I add some scenes, but mostly I add detail, smooth things out and look for inconsistencies. I never write by hand unless I'm out and about and think of something I want to add. Typically, it takes me three drafts to have a finished product ... unless an agent or editor wants to make major changes, then it requires more.
L.J.,
Can you tell us a bit more about how you do rewrites? You mention in #11 about the second draft. Do you use the same computer file for the second draft, or do you completely retype the document? How many drafts does it take you to complete the story? When you rewrite scenes, if you do, do you rewrite inside the same document or outside in a fresh, white space?
And, is all your writing done on the computer or do you do any by hand (the old fashioned way)?
Yes, searching for something in 90K words is a pretty tough proposition. In my current setup, I can find things much better than I could before, but that's a subject for another post. :)
Hello Anonymous,
Can you tell us more about how YOU stay organized? How does what you do differ from what L.J. does? What isn't well handled?
Please, tell us. We're all interested in solving the same problem, albeit approached in different ways. :~
Thanks so much for this! My process is similar (outlines/character sketches/spreadsheets/timelines.) I sometimes wonder if I'm burying myself in the details but if I try to write without this foundation in place, the work is filled with holes and inconsistencies. I've worked with Excel for many years and while it really isn't a database program, I'm comfortable with it and can tweak it to suit my needs.I've recently acquired OneNote and I can see that, once I become more familiar with its features, it will also be a valuable organizing tool.
Jen, I wish you had a login, then I would know I was writing to you :love:
I'm using Access right now to manage the story I'm writing (read:rewriting). Look on the main page of this website, click Home for my blog, then and click About Us to see more about how we came to use Access. As time goes on, I'll be posting more about exactly what we've done with it! :davie:
If you decide you want to make yourself a login, use the Links button in the black menu bar at the top of the page, or send an email using the Contact button to tell me what's not working. Or you can sign in with OpenID, google it to find out more.
By the way, you still didn't say exactly what you were putting into your Access database for your website. ;)
Hope you decide to return! :)
Theresa,
I'm an Access junkie! Anytime I want to collect data, I usually do it in Access. You can keep almost anything in it. I made a database recently at work where I'm keeping the information on participants in our online classes. I can keep track of their personal data as well as what classes they took from us, what roles they had in the class (coach, participant), what section of the class they took, etc.
I also created a movie database. That's still very much a work in process, but using the database I can opt to look up who was in a movie or going from the other direction I can look up what movies an actor has been in.
And address book is really great in a database, too. And with that format you can keep more than address and phone number. You can also keep track of who you sent Christmas cards to, birthdates, family members, most anything you would want to relate to the people in your book.
When you have more three-dimensional data, a database gives you a lot more flexibility that a spreadsheet and you don't have to end up repeating data. A well-built database requires you to save a piece of data in only one place but access it in multiple ways.
In my jobs I've worked with many databases, but Access is great for small or personal databases. It's not difficult to use at all. If you're going to house the Internet Movie Database (imbd.com), you would need something more than Access. But for my purposes, it's fantastic.
Jen,
I've been to your site and read a couple of book reviews, nice site! I'm curious; what exactly are you using Access for? I guess you're keeping track of authors and book titles, but what else?
I was always skeptical about computerized creativity. Keeping track of what's been written is different and helpful.
Hi LJ,
I like your idea about the character database. I don't write myself, but I have been working on building a database in Access (you sound like you've created a spreadsheet) to track not only characters but also books, authors, etc. My main purpose to develop would be for a reference tool for my blogging. Access is also a GREAT tool!
Jen
http://jensbookthoughts.blogspot.com
I have Word 2003 and it doesn't have the Notebook feature. I wish it did. More and more, I'm considering switching to Mac with the next hard drive crash. I, for sure, would like to try the Notebook feature.
You are very organized, L.J. Personally, I think being organized frees up the creativity.
Helen Ginger
http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com
I think most of the software advertised in writing magazines has story development capabilities. I've never felt a need for that. I'd rather plot my own stories in my own twisted way.
Many writers seem unhappy with the software available to them. There was quite a discussion recently on Murder Must Advertise about this subject. There was a lot of agreement that the new version of Word is worse than the previous one (and is hated by some), but it wasn't very clear what writers expect software to do that it's not doing now. I suspect some writers are looking for more organizational capabilities. Overall, I'm pretty happy with Word. My first short stories were done on a typewriter, and I wrote my first novel on a Brother word processor, so I feel spoiled now. Sometimes I wish I had a better search function. There are times when I'm looking for a sentence or section in my novel, but if I don't remember the exact way I keyed part of it in, then the Find function is useless. If Find in Word worked more like Google, that would be awesome.
I find it interesting that you do not mention the writing software advertised at the magazines for writers. Have you tried them and found them unsatisfactory, or did you prefer to seek tools you knew you wanted?
What I know is that the Mac 2004 & 2008 Word versions have it, but earlier versions in Windows do not. When the Notebook Layout icon is clicked, the file converts to what looks like a lined notebook page. As you fill the page it just keeps going without any page breaks, like an endless notebook. There are also vertical tabs along the right side of the file that you can label (Outline, Questions, Evidence). When you click a tab, a new lined notebook page opens. So you can click back and forth between different chunks of information very quickly. For me, it combines what used to be four or five separate documents into one, with easy access to all my notes. So now I keep fewer documents open when I'm working on a novel and spend less time looking for specific information.
Since your day-job version of Word doesn't have the Notebook Layout Tool, what versions of Word have you checked? Would you recommend someone upgrade their Word version?
Can you tell us a bit more about your organizational methods for this tool? I.e. for those of us who've never seen it, or your working environment, we (at least I) have difficulty visualizing exactly how it's used. When the icon is clicked, what happens? Does it provide an electronic 3x5 card kinda thing? Can you divide things into categories? Could you give us some examples of how you use the tool?