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A Writer’s Life: Arcs Over Rewrites

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

So “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet,” my sf/fantasy sarcastic road trip novel, is in editing.  I did a few passes, but now the goal is to tighten up the plot and characterizations.

Originally I had wanted to go over the story and truly re-work it to be “what I wanted.”  The plan was to re-outline the plot, and then do a mix of cut-and-paste, writing, and rewriting to flesh out the “new” novel.  But something felt wrong . . . that kind of thing that tells me I’m doing something wrong.

So that gut feel – why did it feel wrong?  It felt excessive, it felt like a lot of effort, and it also didn’t feel like it’d bring me much.  I’d spend a bunch of time building an outline, then try to shoehorn things in, and as my past experience had told me – I’d probably find plenty of other things I’d have to change.

It’s always important to listen to those gut feelings, and this one said it was a bad idea.

At that point, I discussed this with friends.  How was I going to tweak the plot?  After a few discussions, I went back to my lessons from Agile Software development – good improvement is often iterative.  So how would I truly improve the plot in iterations?

Well, in software you rarely go overhaul everything.  You tweak the components, improving this piece here, that piece there.  My novel wasn’t flawed, it just needed to be improved.  Re-plotting it would have been as logical as doing a working piece of software from scratch just to add a few new features or improve existing ones.

That’s when I realized what I wanted to do was improve various story arcs.  So this is what I’m doing:

  1. First, I went over my notes and thoughts, and wrote down the arcs I wanted to improve or make.
  2. Under each arc I wrote down the general things I wanted to do in story order.
  3. Now with that done, I plan to rewrite just the arcs, going through the story (which I know all too well) to just add to, tweak, expand, or reduce the story to embody these new or improved arcs.

What does this net me:

  • It’s easier.  It’s just not some giant re-outline that’d be inaccurate quickly.
  • It’s about value.  Each individual arc improvement makes the story better.
  • It’s atomistic.  Each arc improvement is roughly standalone, so I can add them with relative ease.  I can also drop them with relative ease.
  • It’s synergestic.  I’m working on one arc at a time, so I get to see the synergies as I go part-by-part (which plays into iterative improvement).
  • It’s iterative.  Each arc I add or improve in the story allows me to re-evaluate progress – and re-evaluate the other arcs I want to add or improve.
  • It’s more hands-on.  I’m editing arcs much quicker as opposed to making some plan, so it keeps me in tune with the story.

I’ll let you know how this goes.  But it’s certainly less of a burden on my mind, it gets me writing quicker, and it fits my Agile experiences.

– Steve

A Writer’s Life: Cover Me 4: Electric Thermador

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Man, been awhile since I did one of these?  Yeah, I got all tied up in that Personal Agile stuff, and overdid it.  So back to a more diverse blogging diet.

I wanted to do a final roundup of my experiment to make 30 book covers to practice my skills.  Last time I noted I actually got a request to do a “pro” book cover and did so.

So first up, here’s where I am:

  1. I did do over 30 covers.  Not all of them were worth posting, others I’m saving as I may actually write these books.
  2. I did slip the last month or so as I had so much else to do.  I probably need to keep practicing.
  3. I did prepare some mockups for future covers.
  4. I did get another request, and plan to keep pursuing those.

So overall, goal reached.  I had over 30 covers done, learned a lot, and feel I’m a much better artist.  But I can’t let this slip – it’s clear I have to keep practicing, which means making covers for myself, making mockups, helping others, and of course doing my own practice covers.  I do plan to keep doing smaller books and other ones where I can do my own covers, so it’s a skill worth keeping up.

Am I a professional?  No.  I can make professional-level work with time, but it takes a lot of effort – that pro-level cover I did for a co-worker took a prototype, a draft, and a final edit for a simple cover.  All-in-all it was probably 6-8 hours work.

Was it worth it?  Oh heck yes.  If you plan to publish a lot, especially if you’re doing a lot of works or doing smaller works (like ebooks only) it’s probably worth trying.  It may work for you if you take the time and have the skills – otherwise, though, seriously, hand someone the money.

Now a few lessons on covers from this roundup:

  1. Fonts.  Seriously you want a range of fonts, and want to know the usage rights.  Yes, there’s google fonts and what’s on your computer, but if you’re real serious, you may need to purchase a few.
  2. Style.  It’s imperative to look at other books that fit the kind of cover you’re making to learn trends – current and past.  Some things change that you need to keep up on – and some are constants you can’t miss.
  3. There’s really few truly simple book covers.  When you look close at many simple covers, there’s tiny bits of precision, from a font choice to a mild outline to a subtle shading in a text divider.  These subtleties are invisible unless they’re missing – then you notice something is dull.
  4. Photo usage rights are a tad complicated, so you want to read up on them.  If you’re using a picture of a live model, the rights can get real complicated; the basic rule is you can’t make suggestions about that model in your cover.  Ever wonder why many books have someone from behind, or the side, or below the neck?  It’s easier.
  5. Practice is really necessary to get good book covers.  It’s it’s own skillset, and even if you are an artist or designer, you might not be as good as you think if you never did a cover before.
  6. An amazing amount of book covers kinda suck.  If you can make or get a good cover it’s worth it.
  7. Finally, this was a great project.  I recommend trying it yourself!

There you go.  Thanks for being with me during this journey – and I’m sure there’s more practice covers to come!

– Steve

Civic Geek: The Enemy Problem

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One of the major problems, perhaps the problem, of American politics is the need for enemies.

This pretty much defines popular “conservative” thought, soaked and saturated in media methods and conspiracy theories.  It’s all about how things would be better except for “those people” – which of course means people who promise to fight “those people” can clean up with legislation, nepotism, favors, and contracts.

But when your whole life is about fighting “those people” with the assumption everything will be magically fixed when they’re defeated (and they’re never defeated because you’ll find new enemies) then you build nothing.  The “fight those people” mentality strip-mines the soul and the culture, until only the battle is left – and the people making bank off of it.  It’s a terribly meaningless attitude.

Way back when Bush Junior was president, I was concerned that he’d too easily become the Hated Enemy, and that dealing with his bad policies (and seeking good policies) would be obscured by people just hating the man.  This did not happen, fortunately, though part of it was probably how fast his previous allies tried to forget him.  I am concerned Trump may end up the bogeyman, even if he is, honestly, an incredibly shitty president and human being.

The key thing in this country – in any civilization – is building, strengthening, and connecting social institutions and people’s connections.  From education to social behaviors, building is what makes us who we are.

Building also provides us real satisfaction.  You can’t be satisfied endlessly looking for someone to fight in the vague hope some day life is better.  This gives us meaning.

A challenge – a true challenge – in America is to get to a building mentality first.  We have to balance that with dealing with a truly terrible administration and its enablers.

A further challenge is to propagate this “builder mentality” so it spreads.  Without it, even the most enlightened and forward-thinking society is endlessly fighting manipulated, angry people all the time.

  • Steve