Saturday, April 6, 2013

When you lose interest in your novel

|| QUICK REMINDER: I'm sixteen. I've never published a book. I'm certainly not the best teen writer in America--not within a hundred miles of that. These opinions are my own, taken from my own experiences. I don't want you to feel like I'm pressuring you to accept advice, because I certainly am not! I hope you enjoy this post ||

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     Hannah from Candy Apple Books asked a really wonderful question in this post. How do you regain interest in a novel idea once that interest has worn off? Amazingly, I found I had a few answers for her. With regards to taking my advice or feeling pressured, please read the "quick reminder" above. I really don't want to make anyone think I'm "better than" any of you. These are just my ideas.

     So . . . how does one do it? Once "the passion" is lost, can it ever be regained?

     To begin with, I'm going to give a little background about my book. If you've followed my blog for a while, or even just for a month or so, you've probably read a post about it or seen it mentioned in passing. It is called The Bridge Between Heaven and Hell, and very long story short, it's about the son of an emperor who finds his once completely controlled life careen out of his hands with the advent of a war against an Elf. That's just the very short story of the beginning--but his loss of control is one of the main points of his story. This story is a fantasy, set in a world I created.

     I formed the idea for Bridge, as I fondly call it, in mid-February 2009. It was a cheap idea then that slowly morphed into something bigger and better. On June 25, 2009, I started to write what I like to call "the first edition": I didn't finish it, and I don't call it the first draft (I would be ashamed to call it the first draft!). Sometime within a year I stopped working on that edition, as my plot at least had gotten quite a bit stronger. Off and on I worked on beginnings for it, actually rather liking one of them, but I didn't continue the one I liked past maybe the first two or three chapters.

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     On December 30, 2010, I began the long-in-the-making, extremely tedious first draft. Except for some parts typed out on the computer, I've written the whole thing by hand. Anything on the computer has been, or will be, copied down to paper. (I'm going to go more into detail on writing by hand in a little while.) As the months have passed, I'm rather amazed I've made it this far and haven't quit. God has given me amazing willpower, as well as a desire not to quit. I have several new ideas and can't wait to change some things once I get to draft two--which will be, I believe, sometime this year--but I have tucked them away for then and don't really worry about them not being in this draft.
     So there's a little background on Bridge's journey. Now, to answer Hannah's question. . . . I'm going to use about three points.

#1 Love your characters.
     I honestly think one of the main reasons I have not quit on this draft--and on this idea--is because I adore my MC, Reuel. True, I would detest him in real life, but I can control all his irritating antics in my book. When writing, I don't think people exactly connect with their plot to the degree with which they will connect to their characters. Characters are people. People have things in common. This is going to sound harsh and know-it-allish, so I apologize in advance: but I think that, if you hate your characters, you either need to ditch them or make them stronger. 

#2 Burn off your steam.
     If there's a scene you've been longing to write for forever, but have been abstaining because you want to be disciplined and stick with the draft at hand, go ahead and write the scene! Or you could do what I do (which might creep you out). I love carrying on dialogues between characters. I do it almost every time I'm alone. Seriously. And it is so much fun. You get to talk in British accents (or at least I do). I don't write off scenes, generally, which might sound rather weird. I act them out (minus the swords and the weird costumes and the palace pillars and the mountains and the . . .)! 

#3 Consider your long hand.
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     Writing by hand is much more popular than I used to think. But nowadays, almost everyone has access to a computer--some of us even have personal laptops. And most of the computers are equipped with word documents, so it's easy just to type out your story. But I think there can be huge benefits to long hand. Having written everything out by hand in this draft, I believe it's made me appreciate my story and my characters that much more. We've spent so much time together (on a super good day, it takes about an hour to write 1,000 words by hand--versus on the computer, in which I could write about 3,000) that I've gotten a lot closer to Reuel and his life. (I'm still not his favorite person though.) So I would challenge you to write maybe your first chapter by hand. Your first draft. Your first 10,000 words. Something. Writing long hand also makes it more difficult to go back and "fix" things, because erasing an entire page makes the page look bad and wears down the eraser and cramps your hand. :)

     And then, remember prayer. God's will.

     I was pretty excited that I had these answers for Hannah. I was thinking about vlogging it--I just figured out how to record myself on webcam!--but then I didn't. Does a vlog sound cool to you? I'm going to think about doing one sometime in the future.

     Be sure to check out the original post, Rekindling the Passion on Candy Apple Books, and offer your own ideas to Hannah!

10 comments:

  1. This is really good, great pointers too. I do REALLY good on #1, I even love my villain! Is that bad? Well, I hate him because of who he is and what he does BUT I LOVE his personality:)

    Layla.

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    1. I think loving your villain is great ;) I think of Point 1 as the most important of all of them. My characters are who I want to come back to. So it's awesome that you do well with that!

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  2. I usually write out my novels out by hand, then I type them out onto the computer. While I do that, I'm editing and changing things along the way.
    Great post! I'll have to remember this next time I'm writing something.

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  3. What a great post!! This has been a great help to me, cause I've been working on this book for about 3 months now and it's been slow process and I've been feeling like I don't know where to go and how to finish! But thanks so much for this post I will totally use some of your pointers:)

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  4. Why vlog when you can write?! This was quite excellent.

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    1. Wow! I'm so excited you all liked it! This is amazing :) I appreciate your comments so much.

      @ Hallie: That's a good point. Writing a blog post is much more helpful to me and my book than vlogging I guess. Although videoing myself doing this post was also great fun :)

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  5. Thank you so much, Hannah, this has been incredibly helpful! :) And i'm glad that my post was able to inspire you. haha :D

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    1. Sure thing :) Btw, I loved the title of that post. You have such awesome titles!

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    2. Well thanks, sometimes I feel like my titles are so stupid, but glad to know you like them :)

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    3. I often think the exact same thing! I wish I was more creative most of the time.

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