Book 5 outline done — and my application of Creative Destruction.

By Holly Lisle

So I have all thirty scenes for Book 5.

I love what I got. It’s solid, it holds together, it brings in essential pieces from the first four novels and uses stuff I hid throughout the first three (and in-progress fourth) stories to tie things up in a fashion I think is really cool.

It’s a target to shoot for… but again —

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

And when you’re the writer, the outline is the plan, then you are the enemy.

So there’s that.

I have done all this work knowing that I’m going to get back to writing Book Four, using the MUCH better ideas that I’ve come up with over the past few days to direct it toward the ending…

And I am going to break shit again.

I imagine my re-think on the rest of Book 4 will mostly hold.

I imagine that the completely destructive outline of Book 5 (not ONE scene from the first outline made it to the second one) is probably doomed to Yet Another Outline when I get to it.

The logical question is:

Why do you do this?

And the born-from-brutal-experience answer is NOT —“If I can’t see where I’m going, I can’t get there.”

It’s much messier and crueler than that. It is, “If I can’t see where I think I’m going, I can’t get anywhere.”

Writing novels for me mostly happens by me having better ideas while I write.

For that to work, I have to have ideas first, though, and they need to be the very best ideas I can come up with at the time.

The process is known (though it’s generally not associated with writing fiction) as “destructive creation.”

It how tractors made horses obsolete — and destroyed the workhorse-breeding industry.  How computers made typewriters obsolete, and destroyed the typewriter manufacturing industry.  

And it’s how I write — I do all this work so that I can break my less-good ideas on my way to coming up with better ideas.

Though I don’t think I’ve ever really thought of it as that until today.


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Today I studied the map, asked WHY… made good progress on OUTLINE 5… figured out why YESTERDAY crashed…

By Holly Lisle

Can’t say today was easy. I walked in circles (literally) because pacing helps me generate ideas, talked to myself out loud to ask important questions, looked at my map and drew a few circles on it to identify story issues…

And then I went back to the line-for-scene outline and managed to come up with eleven line-for-scene sentences, a MASSIVE conflict I’d forgotten to consider while pushing for the series end, and now not only do I love the new direction the series takes in the final novel…

But I cannot wait to write the damn thing.

Could stuff in BOOK 4 break things in the final outline between now and then?

Sure.

Could I hit some sort of wall tomorrow while figuring out the remaining eleven LFS sentences?

Oh, most certainly.

But there are solid principles to storytelling that I follow… and if I don’t end up using what I have now, it will only because I have something that is provably better.

 

About the Tuesday Crash…

I forgot that I hadn’t had any food since Sunday at about 7 p.m.

It’s a mostly regular intermittent fasting thing we do — one meal a day Tuesday through Sunday, then don’t eat again until Tuesday at around 7 p.m.

And mostly that works just fine. Sometimes, though, I get a little hungry by Tuesday morning, and instincts kick in that send me in search of food: BODY gets up and walks to the fridge or to the cashew can, BRAIN grabs body, turns it around, and sits it back at the desk, BODY waits until brain is engaged in though (so not paying attention) and walks over to the damn fridge again…

That, with multiple repetitions, was Tuesday.

Tomorrow, I have eleven more Line-For-Scene Sentences to go to finish the Book 5 outline.

So — this is within reach… and I should be back to writing Book Four on either Friday or Monday.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Down into the DEEP dark… Outline 4 completely redone.

By Holly Lisle

After the weekend break, I came in this morning to a blank outline for Ohio 4, and no idea what was going to go in there… except that it had to be big.

I suspect, however, that while I was playing a lot of No Man’s Sky and having fun in my new solar system with three suns discovering alien lifeforms and building a new base, my subconscious mind was tinkering around with the problems I have with the current Book 4.

Because today, I sat down, and thirty line-for-scene sentences leapt from my fingers to the document in just under two hours.

And they answer my questions. They retrofit the shock I had last weekend into what already exists so seamlessly that books One through Three can stay just as they are…

(WELL, they’re first draft, so I’m still going to have to revise and debug, but this massive revelation doesn’t mess up anything in them)…

And I have my Book Four ending.

And I have the conflict for Book Five that is so compelling, and scary, and kind of heartbreaking, that I can’t wait to write it.

THIS is what taking down-time — walking away from the story for a while, doing things that are not thinking about the book, and just letting things bake — does for me.

I can never look at writing fiction as neat, or orderly, or simple. I can never think it’s easy, even after all these years.

I can never think that I know, absolutely and confidently, where the story is going, or that as I’m writing, I’m writing the best story or the best ending.

I can, however, know that I have a process to get to the best ending.

It’s messy. It’s a lot of work.

But, holy crap, does it ever manage to surprise me in the best possible ways.

So… that was today. 

Tomorrow, (even though I know I’ll be changing things all the way to the end of Book 4), I have to do a new 30-scene line-for-scene outline for Ohio 5.

I already know I won’t use some of it. Maybe most of it.

But just as I cannot hit a target I cannot see, so I can’t make a better target for the final book unless I can see the target that’s already there.

Today changed everything. So tomorrow, I build the new final target that, while I’m writing Book 5, I will try to beat.


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Have figured out the plot summaries for Ohio 4 and Ohio 5 — now to the line-for-scene outlines

By Holly Lisle

Kind of a headdesk day today.

Been at this for about three hours already, and it looks like I’ve only achieved 60 words so far: A 30-word plot sentence for Ohio 4, and a 30-word plot sentence for Ohio 5.

It’s a lot more than that, though.

While I can’t count any of the words, I had to rant at myself in my text notes to figure out the primary and secondary conflicts on each of the two remaining novels, and make sure I included stories for each of the primary series characters…

And I had to figure out how to retrofit one of this morning’s revelations into the three earlier books without breaking anything…

And I had to ditch my main character’s sister — not just for novel four, but for the entire five-book series. It won’t affect that many scenes, or the overall plot (which, in fact, was one of the problems and part of the reason I have to do it), and I’ve figured out how most of the affected minor scenes be adapted for secondary characters who already have other things to do in this series.

If there is a second five-book series in this world… or just one-off novels… I might be able use the sister.

In this series, though, she ended up having nothing essential to do, and her presence raised questions about why she was there in the first place (she gave my MC something important to do at the start of Book 3) — but I figured out a better way to begin Book 3 that will still hit all the same goals.

So… now I’m going to start the new Book Four line-for-scene outline, and hope I can salvage some scene sentences. If I can’t, I can’t.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Reworking the Ohio #4 Outline — The outline from the current chapter on is “burn to ground, start over”

By Holly Lisle

As noted in yesterday’s post, today’s work has required me to gut the outline for Book 4, and rethink.

While I’ll be able to keep the scenes I’ve already written in Book Four, I won’t be able to keep much of any of the future scenes I’d planned.

Progress is slow, and also (big surprise) painful, because all changes to what I’d planned in Book 4 will have a domino effect on what I’d planned for Book 5, and once I finish the first draft of Book 4, I’m going to have to replot Book 5.

This is the price of the better idea — so before you turn your series upside down to chase this beast, you have to know that your “Better Idea” really is better.

This one is.

It is worth all the work it’s taking me to redo the final two outlines, because the single critical piece of information about the villain that my subconscious mind withheld from me through the writing of the first three books and the first quarter of the forth brings a depth and a power to the story that I hadn’t imagined was possible.

I already built the critical pieces of this story line into the first three books… without knowing I was doing it.

However, in Book 4, I started veering away from this secret I was keeping from myself and what it meant — and that was when my gut told me I’d gone in the wrong direction… and FINALLY told me its secret.

No words today. (There’s no point in counting outline Sentences because they don’t ever show up in the actual story).

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


“No plan survives first contact with the enemy…”

By Holly Lisle

Or second contact… 

Or third…

The quote may  come from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, or Carl von Clausewitz, or Dwight D. Eisenhower… or just some dude who knew shit.

But it’s true — and it isn’t just true about war.

It’s true about any sort of creation that requires spontaneous adaptation to unknowable but expected change. Like writing fiction.

I outline while knowing the nature of outlining, which is this —

The thing fictional characters do when presented with a story plan is to act around the plan — to do something that will beat the plan. Fictional heroes and villains alike invariably act like real human beings. That is, they work to improve their own odds of success inside the story, and by doing so, they invariably shift the odds in their favor, and invariably surprise me.

These surprises are good for the story — if they surprise me, they will surprise the reader.

They’re just such a pain in the ass… because my heroes AND my villains keep blowing up my nice, neat, carefully plotted outline.

But anyway, that’s where I am today — several hours into my workday, having to stop to re-plot the next few scenes of my outline to maintain the structure of the story I’m building so that I can keep the cool shit one of the little jerks just did.


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Good progress, good conflict… and a whiff of destruction on the wind

By Holly Lisle

Have been working since 7AM — and today flew.

Book 4 took a dangerous turn this morning, as something I’d sort of tripped over in an earlier book took on a life of its own, and unfolded in front of me in a way I had never even imagined.

There is a schism amongst my main character’s most important allies — discovered today while I was writing.

And while it’s great for the plot, and while I knew something sort of like this had to blow up eventually, when it did, it did so in a way I’d never even imagined.

Blew me away.

So 1268 words (just over the 1250 planned), and 30,312 on the novel, so just over one third of what I have planned on Novel Four…

And I love this.


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Three steps forward, two steps back: Ohio 4, Chapter 7… and done, I think, with stuff brought forward from Ohio 3

By Holly Lisle

I am, much to my delight, just about out of the stuff I saved from Ohio 3 to use in Ohio 4. It’s good stuff, and reworking it so that it fits the current worldbuilding is interesting, and fun…

…But constantly ripping out old words as I insert the better new ones is not my favorite process. 

First draft is — for me — about hitting my stride and telling the story the first time… meeting fresh new situations and seeing how they turn out.

And for the last week-ish, I have not been getting to do pure first draft. I’ve been doing “saving of stuff I wrote into the wrong book the first time.” Which is practical… but kind of a pain in the ass.

In the screenshot below, I have the first three chapters of Ohio 4 — all new material. Then PRE-A through PRE-D — all stuff that I just dragged out of Ohio 3 into this manuscript. Then chapters four through 7.

Screen Shot 2021 08 16 at 12 22 27 PM

 

As of today, I’ve used everything I’m going to from PRE-A- PRE-C now. And just skimming through D before I wrote this, I think I can let that stuff go into the trash. None of it counts as words unless I move it into an actual chapter, so just dumping it won’t affect word count.

If I do that, tomorrow I’ll start in with brand new words… and I’ll get to start running again.

For today, I have a net gain of 332 words, and a total of 29,070.

 

Oh, yeah. And writers who have more series-marketing chops than I do have suggested that I not completely discount Urban Fantasy in favor of Contemporary Fantasy just yet. From my descriptions, some have noted that it sounds like it could fit in with the older and broader definition of Urban Fantasy that started with Charles deLint and Peter S. Beagle…

So I’m going to hang fire on any hard classifications of this until the whole five-book series is done and revised.

Contents © Holly Lisle. https://hollylisle.com All Rights Reserved


Tiptoeing through the minefield… and being mocked by my Muse

By Holly Lisle

I’d hoped to get 1200 words net today, but after a workday that started at six AM and included very little sleep the night before, I’m going to take what I got and go do things that don’t require so much brain.

What I got, though…

Holy Crap!

I found out something absolutely enormous about the over-all series villain today — something that pretty much rocked my world.

Funny thing is, though, that this discovery is one of the sort that is going to require absolutely NO revision to get it to fit into the earlier books.

I have from time to time mentioned that while I’m writing, my Muse (the non-verbal part of my brain where most of my best ideas come from) keeps secrets from me.

Some of them are minor. Some of them are kind of cute.

Today I met one of those secrets — And this one was EPIC.

More astonishingly, I have been writing important pieces of that particular secret into the novel from day one, never recognizing the actual meaning of what I was writing.

This wasn’t a little mike-drop moment for my Muse.

This was that wicked elf dropping the mike, flashing his ass, and laughing like a loon. It was, “Hahahahahah! Sucker! I’ve known this all along.”

(Why was my muse male today? Don’t know. It shifts.)

Anyway, while I probably got my 1250 or more in real words written, my net gain was only 846. But with the Muse revelation, which was awesome once I got over the shock… I’ll take it.

It was a good, good writing day.


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The truth about elves… 2,266 words today, 27,056 words total, and a LOT of fun

By Holly Lisle

Tolkien aside, I have always preferred small, fast elvish trouble-makers to tall, willowy, blonde high elves.

And today I had a LOT of fun writing the little troublemakers, and got sheer joy reveling in knowing who they’re about to start making trouble for.

Some of what landed in the book today was a cut-and-paste save from Book 3 that had to be moved into Book 4.

A lot of it, though, was me having my ass out of bed at six a.m today and being to work by seven.

FUN writing day… and if past experience serves, that should make for fun reading when I go back through to revise these.


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