Some writers are organised.  They create an outline and write their novel from that.  While the story may deviate a little it is basically in place before they start. 

Others just start writing, and end up with this big, overblown mess that’s full of holes.  They have to chop and tweak and move things around and add extra bits.

We’re one of the messy ones.

As a result, we probably write three times as much as we need to (not all in the same draft).  Our working out is done on the pages of the novel, rather than beforehand.  What goes into the first draft may not remain in later drafts.

Even so, a lot of what you cut is not wasted.  It ends up as back story.  You know your characters and your worlds so much better because of this back story.

Occasionally that information even comes in useful in unexpected ways in later drafts.

In draft 1 of Barrain we had a sub-plot where Scott was fed a drug called casseye. It was odourless and tasteless.  Barrainers fed it to their slaves to make them docile.

We got rid of the sub-plot in the second draft, and we got rid of the slaves.  Neither were necessary to the story.

Then here we are in draft three, trying to work out how Caid and his group could possibly have committed the massacre that starts the story.  And suddenly we have it. 

Casseye.  Of course.

So if you’re messy writers like us, don’t despair over those big chunks you have to cut.  They’re still useful.  And who knows, they may even come back into the story in a different guise in a later draft.

Music is important to me when I write.  It helps set the mood for the story and makes it easier to start writing.  It’s part of the routine of writing.  I find I write better when I have music to listen to. 

It has to be a particular type of music though, and the music is different for each novel.  I know one novel I wrote way back when (one of those under the bed, never to see the light of day) was written to a combination of MeatLoaf’s Bat Out of Hell and seemingly the whole Chris de Burgh back catalogue.  Another one had a lot of Carmina Burana in it.

Changing the music spoils the mood.  No matter how much I think I can listen to something else, I have to introduce new music to the collection gradually, because if it doesn’t fit it spoils the writing flow, and then I have to get back into it.

One of the things I like is when a writer says in the introduction to their novel what music they listened to when they wrote it.  Just for fun I thought I might list my own current writing music.  This is for two novels—Barrain and Shared Memories, because we’re writing different drafts of these at the same time.

• Va Pensero, the Ten Tenors, from Bravo Act II
• Hoki Hoki Tona Mai, Yulia, from Bravo Act II
• Anthem, Anthony Warlow, from Chess
• Conquest of Paradise, Vangelis, from 1492
• Any Fool Could See, various, from Paris
• What Could Go Wrong?, Trevor White/John Parr, from Paris
• Trust in Your Heart, John Parr, from Paris
• Just Show Me How to Love You, Jose Cura/Sarah Brightman/Andrea Bocelli/LSO, from Time to Say Goodbye
• The Medallion Calls, Klaus Badelt, from Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl
• One Last Shot, Klaus Badelt, from Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl
• He’s a Pirate, Klaus Badelt, from Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl
• If Only, Original cast, Whistle Down the Wind
• Lakme H2O (Flower Duet), Opera Babes, from Beyond Imagination
• Silk Road, Kitaro (but I like the LSO’s version too), from Kitaro’s Silk Road Suite)
• Hymn to New England, John Williams, from An American Journey
• Just When I’d Given Up Dreaming, Ronan Keating, from Bring You Home

Some writers create elaborate worlds before they start writing their fantasy or science fiction novel.  These writers create maps.  They know the of every creek and hilltop, the world history back to ten generations, particularly the lineage of their protagonist.

Other writers let the world evolve as they write the book.

We fall into the second category. We start with a character and a situation, and discover the world along with the story.  We do this even with stories like Rainbow, where the world is so integral to the story it is almost a character in itself.

It has some problems. 

Shared Memories started out as fantasy and morphed into science fiction.  That took some world changes we were still fixing into the third draft.  It also made it very soft science fiction (as distinct from hard science fiction, which has heavier doses of technology).

Given that we don’t plan out the world in advance, we then have to do it as part of the draft process.  It’s usually part of draft two, closer to the start of the rewrite than the end.

Once we have a story we go through it and plot the locations on a map. 

With Barrain, we would only map Barrain, not Earth.

We start the map with two points.  Elna’s village, and Demon City.  Elna’s village is in the mountains.  Mark in some mountains.  Demon City used to be known as the City Between Sea and Mountain—that makes us think it’s close to the coast, but also close to a mountain.  Place it near the coast, but not on it, near more mountains with a narrow hinterland. 

It takes weeks to get to the city.  Do they walk the whole way?  If so, how far can we walk in a day?  These people are fitter than us, and younger, so they will walk maybe twice as far.  (Right now we are horribly unfit.)

Multiply the kilometres walked per day by the number of days on the road and we get an idea of the scale.

We fill in other bits of the map from details of the journey as per the novel.  Once we’re done we might fill in blank bits of the map if we feel like it, but mostly we don’t.

And that’s pretty much it.  Our world map.  We stick it in front of the draft and that’s the master, and only copy.

We are now a quarter of the way through the novel, and this weekend finished our first major read-through to ensure we are on track and know where we are going.

The changes we are making to this draft are major, more like a second draft that a third, but that’s writing, I suppose.  Unpredictable.

In this sort of read we cover everything from major plot queries:

“I know we said the body was in stasis, but surely it would have started decomposing by now.  If it hasn’t, we had better explain it far more clearly than we have.”

to minor things like:

“How many bottles of water?  Ten 1.25 litre bottles is a huge amount.  Could you even carry them?”

The complete list of comments can be seen here. 

We will consider these and rewrite them before we add too much more stuff.

This tidying up is important.  Little changes here may impact the story later. If we don’t change them now these changes turn out to be major rewrites in the next draft.

Progress overall has been slower than I would like.  It has taken almost 12 months to get this far.  Let’s hope the next three quarters of the book don’t take anywhere near as long.

It was hand written on one of the Moving Poetry posters on the train.  Wedged in between a poem about football parents and another reflecting how their home town had changed since they left it.

Ticket inspectors
you yearn for my ticket.
I yearn for your heart.

Anon

So perfectly placed in between two other poems of the same form (rooku, an Australian variant of haiku).  So appropriate in the context.  It was on a train; ticket inspectors patrol the trains; they are often accused of being heartless.

Nowadays most graffiti is modern art or tags, whose only function is to mark territory, much like a dog marks territory by lifting his leg at every lamp post.

Not much written graffiti survives, and what does is usually of the dial a sex service form.

The witty, entertaining social commentary is gone, except for the occasional hold-out like the one I saw on the train this morning.

It’s a sign of the times.  We communicate in pictures now, rather than words.  Furthermore, rather than providing social commentary, today’s graffiti seems to be created mostly to draw attention to the creator.

---

If you want to read the rooku Moving Poetry, you can find it here.