Metaphors for writing

When I first started writing, I remember remarking to someone that it felt like what I've assumed learning to juggle would feel like. There were all these things to keep track of at once: plot, subplot, character, dialogue, description, showing vs. telling, active voice vs. passive...

As a metaphor, I think that's still pretty accurate (even if I've since realized that you can focus on one of those aspects at a time -- that's part of the point of revisions) but I realized this week that I have another one as well: writing is like assembling a puzzle.

My current project is Karen Miller's fault. I'd written a fanfic, a short story I'd done to satisfy a question I'd long had about a particular situation a man and woman might find themselves in. (In this case, the fandom was secondary to the question of the story.) And after reading it, Karen told me she thought I could/should turn it into a novel.

I'd been assuming I'd write a contemporary novel (the 'write what you read' isn't very helpful for me, since the only genre I don't read is horror) and this would have to be fantasy or historical. I chose fantasy because it was a better fit.

With a fantasy story, which comes first -- the world or the characters? I decided first to focus on the worldbuilding, convinced that whoever the characters turned out to be, they would be heavily influenced by the world they inhabited. (We're heavily influenced by our backgrounds -- why wouldn't fictional characters be?) Building a world that was sufficiently different from the fandom I started out in then took a while.

The heroine fell into place pretty easily, given the overall story idea and the worldbuilding. But the hero has been more of a question. On the plotter/pantzer scale, I'm somewhat of a 'plotzer' -- I start out knowing the characters, how the story begins and ends...and nothing at all of the middle. So I find myself thinking about the hero and realizing that he could go this way, or he could go that way, (in terms of his goals and motivations, and the conflicts that grow out of them) or, possibly, even a third way. And whichever one I choose will drastically affect the story. It will still start the same and end the same, but...different story.

And that's what I was thinking when I realized I was approaching the whole thing as a puzzle. If the hero is like this, it will fit with this piece of the plot in that way; if he's more this other way, it will cause the subplot to go in this direction...

Nothing really earthshaking in any of that from a thoughts-on-writing perspective, though it illustrates, I think, how very different one writer's approach can be to things like plot and characters.

Oh, and I'm getting closer to figuring out who the hero is. I like puzzles -- did I mention that?

Still here, getting back on track

My apologies for appearing to have abandoned this blog. I didn't, and it certainly wasn't my intention to go so long without updating it. (In particular, I didn't want to foist yet another blog on the world that would be started, then dropped, the author never being heard from again.)

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had to move in June -- from the place I'd lived for eight years to a smaller place. There are a lot of advantages to where I'm living, but much of May and June were taken up by sorting, tossing, packing, moving, and unpacking. With a couple of out-of-town family events (a graduation and a wedding) thrown in for good measure. Erg.

But things are starting to calm down now. I'm mostly unpacked, if not yet feeling completely 'together.' I've started writing again, and am working on a post or two for this blog, my goal being to post at least several times a week. Expect the first 'real' post by this weekend.

Thank you for your patience...