The Story Draft

How do you write?

On Linkedin there are several writers' groups that share ideas regularly. One of the ongoing discussions is about methodology - how writers craft a story, whether they write to a conclusion or let the conclusion flow from the creative aspect. As you can imagine, there are many different styles. Some are notorious outliners, and plan every detail before they begin. Others rely on more fluid process, and let the story "talk to them."

I am definitely a free-writer - thanks to a class I took years ago at Evergreen College from Peter Elbow, one of the country's sage authors and professors of writing. I write in what I call "snippets" - disconnected pieces of stories within a general theme. And the word "general" is used very loosely.

But you cannot write a novel this way. At some point you have to begin the process of assembling all these ideas and fitting them together. This is where I use my "Story Draft." The Story Draft is a spreadsheet that serves as an outline that I make when I have completed about 2/3 of the initial writing - but it is much more than that.

Each of my snippets is numbered by chapter and section, and the spreadsheet lists the number of words in each. In "As Angels Weep" - book 4 of The Juno Letters - I have five parallel stories that follow the lives of three girls who have escaped from Berlin, a Gestapo captain consumed with finding them, and the investigator seeking to locate the girls as women in the present day. Each of these separate stories were included in a single chapter initially and written pretty much from start to finish - by sections. The completed book, however, would be difficult to follow that way. That is where the number comes into play.

My story draft comes together when I take my snippet listings and rearrange them in the logical sections and breaks which become the final chapters. The numbering lets me easily find them in the initial manuscript and allows me to move sections around easily - renumbering as I go. The word numbering allows me to keep the groups of sections balanced so I don't inadvertently skew the narrative one way or another. I also color code certain relevant sub-ideas so I can make summaries of such things as sections primarily dialog, narrative, girl 1 story, back story, etc. I can tell at a glance where I have to make improvements.

When the first story draft is completed, I print the document and do editing manually - often moving sections around. It is very easy to simply make a note - "Insert 10.3 before 12.6" - for example. It also shows me where I need to cut or add narrative to achieve the balance I am after.

I am about halfway through the story draft of "As Angels Weep" and discovered that I have overwritten one girl's story and left out some important parts of the "back story" - the present day narrative. The spreadsheet view shows these anomalies clearly.

Historical Fiction - Finding Stories With the Story

History is the story of mankind - the dynamics of the lives of all people, big and small. The author of historical fiction writes against a background of known facts, timelines, people, and places yet somehow must find that unique story, that untold perspective that keeps readers engaged. For many, the historical novel is the only history they have ever read since leaving school.

Our writing shapes their views of current events, modifies their understanding of the past, and shapes their reactions to events yet to come. That reality brings with it an intellectual challenge - how to be true to history yet write a story that is purely fiction. I resolve that dilemma by following two rules:

RULE 1 - Do your homework. The setting of my novels are meticulously researched. I document my background story as if I were writing a thesis for submission for my doctorate degree. I even include citations where necessary.

RULE 2 - Find a story within the story and make it your own. I search out small stories of people and places that are generally known but for which little detailed documentation exists. I then insert my characters as actors within that story. The result is a blending of fact and fiction that at times can confound even hard core historians.

Here is an example from Chapter 12 of The Juno Letters, Book 1 of my series of the same name. You can download the actual story at the links below.

The German civilian construction organization Todt built the Atlantik Wall - the line of fortifications that stretched from Norway to Spain to keep the Allies out of Fortress Europe in 1944. A member of a French resistance cell posed as a painter and bid on a wallpapering job at Todt headquarters in Caen and stole a map of the fortifications. The map was passed to a high level French resistance operative known as Colonel Remy. It was then smuggled by boat out of a tiny port called Pont-Aven on the Brittany coast. All this is generally well known (although this is one of two versions of the event - the more interesting one).

I place my main character, Antoine Bouchard, in Pont-Aven. He then becomes the person that smuggles Remy to England, and initiates a chain of events that leads to his fateful role in the invasion of Juno Beach on D-Day - all fiction ... but entirely plausible.

Anyone checking my facts will find it hard to determine where the line between fact and fiction lies, and therein lies the key to a good story. That credibility makes my story’s D-Day climax - another story within the story - all the more realistic.

I always tell my readers that the basic elements of my novels are fiction, but I know from their feedback they don’t believe me. That is perhaps the best review of all. Good writing.

You can read this story within the story - Chapter 12, The Juno Letters; junoletters.com by downloading a free copy just for reading this post at: junoletters.com/bookcard.php

The Kindle version is published by California Times Publishing and available through Amazon. All other versions are available at junoletters.com/bookshelf.php including paperback and audio.

#writers #L.W. Hewitt #historical fiction #how to #story within a story

Signing with a Publishing Company

TodToday I signed a contract with California Times Publishing, a new book publishing company that supports the independent writing community. Like many writers, I lose a lot of creative time when I have to promote my books, so it is helpful to partner with others to achieve our mutual goals. Sure, you give up some degree of control, but no venture is ever successful doing everything by oneself. I look forward to seeing how this works out. Another chapter, another set of good stories, another adventure. What a job!

Writing like any other work is ... work

I just finished publishing The Clan of the Black Sun - book 3 of The Juno Letters. It seemed a good time to reflect on the story and the versions of the print and e-books, especially since my audio producer, Gary Regal, just finished the audiobook of The Juno Letters - Book 1. Let's face it - e-books are just plain **** ugly. They appear like one long text message. It is difficult to put much formatting in one - I struggled to get the block quote of the letters and journals working for a long time. You cannot control the line spacing very well, and mixing things such as first line indents and flush lefts are trouble. I have a template now that allows me to safely do the three formatting things I need to tell the story, but I dare not change any of it. Every time I produce a book, I cross my fingers and pray to the SMASHWORDS gods. I still cannot get the Table of Contents to work right in Kindle and ePub. But they work well enough - given the state of the eBook world. I decided I could still create a beautiful book in print, so I redid the format of my books on CreateSpace. I use Trajan Pro for the headings, the same font I use in the covers, and a more readable text font. I have far more control over the layout, and get to use 'fleurons' - those curlycues and flower-like objects used as separators. The result is wonderful. Like I have written many times, a book SHOULD BE a work of art in form as well as writing. Apple make a program called iBooks Author that allows a writer to create an enhanced e-book using discrete formatting - plus a host of embedded gizmos - available only in landscape mode. In portrait mode it flows like an ebook - the best of both ... almost. The templates for the program are not well formatted for novels. I struggled with this for a log time, and gave up last summer. But I took another look - determined to create a solution. I jury-rigged a template to work in both portrait and landscape, and still produce the correct TOC. The result is an enhanced iBook version of the entire series on iTunes, and I am pleased how they turned out. There are some improvements I can make, I am certain, but compared to the average ePub, it is a work of art. Changes to iTunesConnect have made it easier to publish despite a couple of bugs I discovered and reported (it's a curse), but it still takes way too long for the books to go live. Such is the fun of being on the cutting edge of a new media revolution. Check out the iBooks version when they finally go live - available only on an iMac, iPad, and iPhone (probably iPod too). It is the closest thing to holding a real book you will find in e-format. If you have any other version of one of my books (not including NOCK, sorry) just email me and I'll send you the enhanced ibook version for free. I have reformatted all of the versions with some minor format improvements, and will replace any kindle or epub files as well. Email me at larryh@hewittmbm.com

Ascendency of Digital Publishing

Digital publishing has risen to seriously affect the traditional print market. Tradition print is dominated by a select few publishers who exercise undue influence over who gets published, how long titles remain in print, and royalties. That world is beginning to crumble. Harlequin Romance novels are published by Torstar, a holding company. That division saw a considerable loss of profits last year. If you want to read a very boring corporate financial report that details this, go to http://www.torstar.com/images/file/2013/2013MDA%20030414%20final%20v2.pdf For a quick synopsis, I quote: "... a number of digital-only publishers and other digital distribution models are emerging and authors have greater opportunities to self-publish, often at lower prices than traditional publishers. The proliferation of less expensive, and free, self-published works could negatively impact [sic - the corrrect word is 'affect'] Harlequin's revenues in the future." (see link, p. 36) Read Mark Coker's summary analysis on his blog as SMASHWORDS:http://blog.smashwords.com "10 Reasons Indie Authors Will Capture 50% of the Ebook Market by 2020" Cheers

Juno Letters featured on "Fly High"

Fly High is a blog from Rome, Italy about art, literature, and movies published by Maria Garza. She featured The Juno Letters in her most recent interview ... take a look at BRINGING THE PAST BACK TO LIFE - AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LARRY HEWITT, THE JUNO LETTERS SERIES.

Book 3 - Clan of the Black Sun will be published this week! Hooray! I will post a link to the Prerelease Edition when it is ready - probably Friday. You will have a period of time to download a free copy - you can email me with all my typos! (I have been editing for 3 weeks - there'd better not be any)

Trouble in River City (it's raiing here again ... we flood) etc.

I have a knack for getting into trouble - what I prefer to call "issues." I spent several weeks trying to get information on a license for the music to "Somewhere in Time" to include it on my video. The music industry, despite iTunes, is still mired in antiquated ways of doing business. If anyone had the cash, you could reinvent commercial access rights in an iTunes format and destroy the existing multi-tiered and inefficient commercial music industry - worth billions. A thought for another day ...

I gave up and posted it. Guess what? They found me ... real quick(ly). Pretty funny. The video now is without the soundtrack, but I have 10 (yes, 10) different brokers, agents, and 'consultants' all asking me what my budget for the music is. NOT 'it'll cost you $XXX for that' but how much I can spend.

Imagine going to the Wal-Mart and when you go to check out, they say "How much can you give us".

We'll see how this plays out. In the meantime, the second draft of Clan of the Black Sun (notice the title change) is completed, and the fun part starts - rereading until my eyes drop out of my head.