A Study in the Process

If you’ve read my profile, you know why I’m here. This blog is intended to record the writing process, as difficult and breathtaking as it is, as well as sundry distractions that contribute to the difficulty.

I’m embarking on a second novel. The first is not yet sold, although it is actively being submitted. The two are very different — the first takes place in the South during the Second World War, and is told from the first-person point of view of one character. The second is present-day, third-person, from the points of view of several characters.

What they have in common astounds me — they are both, fundamentally, about healing broken people. Now, you could argue that much of my life is about that, because I’ve worked in the 9-1-1 industry for much of my adult life, and the magazine I edited/wrote for also focuses on this industry. But me? — I’m a curmudgeon, not especially openly emotional, fairly ignorant of my own feelings about things (an offshoot of the 9-1-1 job in many ways), valuing rationality and logic (another offshoot). I find the humor in most situations fairly readily, but I don’t find it especially easy to read others or arrive at any obvious conclusions about how a given situation will affect them emotionally. And some emotions, I flat don’t understand at all — so I’m always suspicious of them. Jealousy, for example, or revenge, or guilt. They all seem intentionally destructive, and as such, I don’t understand why anyone would indulge in them, or even why human beings are wired to experience them.

I guess the point is that I’m surprised to find myself writing about healing people emotionally, because the touchy-feeliness of that makes me uncomfortable. Yet it works. And no, I’m not blind to the idea that I may be telling myself something!

Process. The second novel is, structurally, similar to something I read recently — a group of characters, each facing his or her own challenges, whose lives all intersect as they participate in achieving a common goal. The goal, nominally achieved, actually changes into something bigger (I’m not sure they consciously realize it immediately) along the way. Weaving each story into the bigger picture is tricky.

So here’s what I’m doing as an exercise: I got a copy of the book I read recently, and I’m pulling it apart, scene by scene — studying its structure. Who gets introduced first and why? What are the relationships between the several POV characters, and what are the sub-relationships (for example, they’re all friends, but do some have histories with others that aren’t universally shared, or are some closer to others than to the group as a whole?) How are the action elements blended to make a cohesive whole? How late is the last main character introduced? How does the author ensure each character has a unique and recognizable personality? How much backstory is presented and when? And so on.

I expect to learn a lot from this part of the process, and will let you know if I can recommend it as an exercise.

~ by seriouswriter on May 26, 2007.