A Novel Idea Part 3: Your Writing Road-map

My Fellow Contributors,

The novel is progressing and the characters are inviting me into their world. I am currently done with 30 frames of my 50 frame goal.

And with that I reach the topic of my blog this week: Having a plan of attack for your novel. Establishing a series of goals and checkpoints that allow you to mark tangible progress in your novel writing process.

But before I get into my writing road-map, I wanted to discuss how I am breaking away from the social norm of how most authors think about writing a novel. Where most authors see themselves as writing a book, I am going about it as though I am writing a screenplay.

A screen play has limited narration, simple stage directions and thus is mostly dialogue. This allows the director more freedom to create the film how he sees it and not how the writer envisioned it himself. Which sounds more user friendly given that in the Novel-land, the director is analogous to the reader and the screenwriter analogous to the page-writer.

When writing your first draft, I find this approach, putting less attention on the details and more attention to the character-narrative, not only more desirable but also healthier.

It is more desirable in the sense that you are able to get through many different frames without being bogged down in one particular part of the story. By not being concerned with every little detail of your narrative the first time through, you don't have to worry about contradictions that will inevitably show up through out the frames of your first draft as you get deeper and deeper into the local narrative. This type of drafting is also healthier than the traditional A to Z appoarch because you are able to amass a large amount of clay from which you can shape subsequent drafts. You don't get lost in a narrative and then end up giving up because you can't decided whether your heroine is wearing all black, or white lace and how this will impact the rest of the novel. You don't feel like you have to answer all of your Narrative's questions or tie up all of the loose ends in a given chapter.

REMEMBER:

Always leave more to write.


So now on to my road-map.

Like any long, continuous project, it is important to have goals. Not only does it give you a sense of accomplishment but it also gives you a way of holding yourself accountable. By giving yourself steps, you are more likely to make it to the next level, no matter what the endeavor.

My first goal is to get to 50 frames.

Why 50?

I chose 50 for several reasons. First, it gives me a large amount of clay to work with and shape. Second it was a large number that, while obtainable, would require dedication and commitment to reach. It should be noted that my novel will more than likely consist of more than 50 frames.

Frames are awesome Bermuda, but how long is it going to be? How many words do you have written?

A friend asked me these same questions and you know what, I told him this:

I have no idea.

And you know what else, I particularly dislike that way of thinking for a lot of reasons but the major one is because thinking about writing length in terms of word count is very demoralizing and limits yourself in the early stages of your writing process. I would much rather think of a goal in terms of writing frames rather than writing words. The smaller number of frames relative to the tens of thousands of words in a novel makes me feel like I can achieve my goals and makes the project seem less daunting. Another reason this way of this is detrimental is that it limits you. Don't worry about length, about making it this long or this short, just write until the narrative tells you she's all done.

Alright, Respect. So, what do you do when you have all your frames?

After I've finished the 50 frames, I am going to type all of them into my computer. As I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, the act of typing is in essence a revising step. Once all of the frames have been typed/revised, then each of the frames gets a title.

The title will then be placed on an index card. Much like a story board I will then place frames out until I have a straight forward narrative. This step is important because I don't write the frames in a linear fashion. Frame #23 and Frame# 24 for example are not apart of the same local narrative. By laying out each local narrative, I am able to see the holes or rather gaps in each of them. Once the gaps have been identified, I can begin the third draft which will consist for the most part of me filling the gaps in each of the three local narratives I have in the novel and shaping smooth transitions between frames of a given local narrative.

Once the local narratives have been laid out and frames have been added to plug the holes, all of the frames now get put on another round of flash cards same as before. Each with a title for the frame. This is where the magic happens. This is where you weave the three local narratives into your main over-arching narrative. This is where you will spend most of the time editing; moving this and that in an effort to create a tempo for your novel that maximizes the meaning.

Well that's it for this week, my Fellow Contributors.

REMEMBER: set goals for yourself that are obtainable and challenging. By breaking up your writing process into steps, you'll be surprised when your standing on top looking down on the world as they read your finished novel.

Next week I am going to be posting a picture of my actual notebook and going over the structure of a Frame. What should it include, what the structure is like, how long it should be and how it should function in relation to the local and main narratives.

As Always

Undoubtedly Your,

Bermuda

Some Minor Thoughts on Art and Snobbery

A student in my Freshman English class has been absent from the last few class meetings. After class tonight, as I was getting him up to speed, for summation, he offered, "so what we've been doing lately is basically common sense, right?"

Let me back up a second so as to explain why I was not at all insulted by this remark.

Over the last couple days in the course, I have been guiding my students in the process of visual analysis in the hopes that the techniques used to dissect a largely visual medium will smoothly translate for them to analysis of written works. Last class meeting, we looked at advertisements, picking apart the elements that appeal to ethos, logos, and/or pathos and determining whether or not each example was truly effective or not.

So, when I summed all this up for my previously-absent student in a brief rundown, he responded with the above question. My response? "Right!"

I have to say that I was thrilled that this guy sees what we are doing as "common sense." If more people could feel that way about reasonably complex rhetorical concepts, what an easy job I would have. Well, let's be honest, what a pointless job I would have!

I see the necessity of my job when it comes to guiding students toward writing better, more coherent, more focused, more effective papers; but, often I feel a certain level of rage at the concept that our college students need to be taught how to look at something in a critical manner. The worst part is, of course, when even after an extensive explanation and comp check as to how to conduct the steps of critical/logical thinking, groups of students (varying significantly in size and number depending on the particular level of the class) stare at me as if I am some kind of alien who has just asked them to watch random acts of sodomy.

So, when a student informs me that what I'm teaching him makes perfect sense, I'm practically beside myself. I wanted to give him a gold star for already knowing what basically everyone should be able to figure out all by their little selves.

But, before I ruined this little moment for myself with negative thoughts, I decided to do something uncharacteristically humble and compare myself to my students. I have a bit of a checked academic past. As I have confessed to you, our reader, before, I was not the greatest of students, and I only really got my act together as a result of being bullied into doing so. Even when I did get my act together and started doing well in school, I really only put true heart and concern into my English and literature classes, which is why I became a totally badass student by the time grad school came around.

All of this is to say that I know how it feels to not get (and not care all that much about getting) certain academic subjects. Subjects I was less than enthusiastic for included biology (101), anthropology, and statistics. The subject I just happened to kick ass at and truly enjoy was English. I get that every student has his/her true interests and then the subjects that he/she couldn't care less about.

While I can explain away the rhetorical appeals, employ Stasis Theory to dazzle any freshman, and identify the audience for a particular advertisement down to a T, I don't know shit about chemistry. And I have to remember before I get all high and mighty and annoyed with the majority of my students for not getting rhetoric, that a hell of a lot of them know more about chemistry (and math and sign language and various elements of life in general) than I do.

The whole reason I personally find literature and art to be fascinating is because I see them as THE ways for answering the questions of the universe and what it means to be human; I love to dwell in the struggle for meaning and art is all about that and these are the realms that make sense to me.

Some people will agree with me, like my student earlier tonight did, and say that seeing the world through a lens of argument and writing is "common sense," as I'm sure most of us here agree as this is a blog site for a literary magazine. But let's not get so caught up in the way we view the world, in the beauty that we've found, to forget that many people happen to be wearing an entirely different set of prescriptions.

Reflections on Education

To college students and educators,

What does it mean "to educate"? A couple of things I've recently read have caused me to ask this question. First of all, fellow-editor, Ryan, posted about the prevalent downfalls of freshman composition. As a composition instructor at a local community college, this matter particularly struck my interest. The other article relating to both parts of my current ponderings (that of what it means "to educate" and what a composition instructor should strive to do) is from The Chronicle, is written by Kurt Schick, and can be found at http://chronicle.com/article/Citation-Obsession-Get-Over/129575/.

I certainly agree with Ryan's point that many professors focus on form and not content. I also agree with Ryan's sentiment that this focus is detrimental to students who already possess writing and critical thinking skills and equally to those who do not. This type of instruction teaches students that there writing is not "correct" if not systematically or if not following a prescribed format. This format is often, of course, the five paragraph essay.

Schick's article, "Citation Obsession, Get Over It," deals with many professors' and writing centers' over-bearing focus on teaching the intricacies of citation formats such as that of the MLA. Schick says that students are being stifled when they are made to memorize such mundane information and that the focus should be instead on helping students to understand how to better integrate outside sources and information into their own writing and ideas. To further illustrate the context of the uselessness of MLA format documentation for undergraduate students, Schick argues, "Bibliographic citation has apparently eclipsed perfect grammar and the five-paragraph theme as the preoccupation of persnickety professors." Having worked for years at a writing center and for some time now as an instructor, I can attest to the truth of Schick's argument with one caveat that I'm pretty sure Ryan would agree with: citation formatting and the five-paragraph essay are both still "the preoccupation[s] of persnickety professors." And, I realize now, that both need to be thrown out the window of the ivory (and not-so-Ivory) towers of undergraduate education.

But, without them, how do we teach writing? Well, one of the concepts that may need to be embraced is that we can't "teach" much at all; what we can do is demonstrate and encourage. Many composition pedagogy writers have written about the importance of fostering an environment for learning and critical thinking. I can honestly say that I didn't really understand what that meant until a few days ago when reading my students' most recent batch of essays. They had gotten the form down- intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. But, there was nothing there. I had spent far too much class time explaining formats and helping them with their generic outlines, and I had spent far too little time helping them to actually develop their ideas. Reading some of their essays was like eating a burger with no meat (not even a veggie patty), pardon the somewhat tired metaphor. The bun is nice and fluffy, the condiments are tasty, but without the meat, the questions remains, "why the hell am I eating this? Hell, why was it even made?" and when the only answer to these questions is something along the lines of "because I have to consume it because they had to make it," there is a problem. There is a problem because only a few years ago I got into this field because I wanted to do something where I could always be learning and thinking and because I wanted to encourage others to learn and to think too. When I as an instructor am only reading to grade and not with any interest in learning from what my students have to say (because, well, they didn't say much of anything) and my students are only writing to a bench mark, not for discovery or to really think about anything, what is the point of any of it? This is a question that extends to all fields of study, particularly at the college level, though I would like to think that it could be applied to any realm of education.

I'm not going to ask this rhetorically; I am just going to say it. In education, students should be encouraged to care about learning for the sake of learning and educators should feel the same. There should be excitement on both ends- there should be excitement to teach and to encourage students to think and there should be excitement in learning and thinking. Otherwise, what are any of us doing in these classrooms we spend so much of our lives in? If you're a student and you think of your time in that chair as just a means to make more money, well, there are better and, for you, more interesting ways. And if you're a professor and you think of your time in the classroom as simply your current means of making money, there are certainly more lucrative ways.

The fault for what we are, our means-to-an-end laziness, lies in the hands of the educators and the students. Professors and teachers would often like to blame it on the "damn kids;" this is to ignore the fact that the only difference between the two is a couple diplomas. We are all the same. We all fall into the trap of easy formats. It is, after all, easier to teach about MLA citation and how to write a five paragraph essay than it is to find effective ways to encourage critical thought. But, if teachers continue to teach in those easy unthinking ways, then students will continue to complete their work that same way and I will continue to be frustrated when they turn in essays that are so formulaic and unthinking that I don't want to read them.

To answer my original question, what does it mean "to educate." Well, oddly enough, dictionary.com actually has a decent answer: "to develop the faculties and powers of a person…" Let's keep that in mind the next time we are in a classroom, whether it be in a chair or at the front of the room. Let's not stifle or be stifled, let's not get caught up in what's expected, let's forget about formats for awhile. Let's remember that we are there to read, to question, to think, to write, to explore, and let's enjoy our time doing so- otherwise, let's go somewhere else.