story mapping

The next chapter weekly: Feb 5-11, 2023

/ Melanie Marttila

Welcome to week six of 2023!

This week, the tarot card I drew was The Wheel of Fortune. This card symbolizes infinity, boundless energy, turning point, destiny, life cycle, endless possibility, and purpose. It can represent unexpected changes, in either a positive or negative direction.

I’m seeing this card as a positive change in my life, both at work and creatively.

From the Celtic oracle deck, I pulled The Father/Dagda, for the second week in a row. And I shuffled that deck.

Pairing The Wheel of Fortune and The Dagda seems portentous.

The 5th was also the full cold moon (and moon in Leo for the astrologically inclined). I renewed my goal to rid myself of a certain kind of autistic inertia and get to bed at a reasonable hour. It’s getting better, but I’m not as rested as I need to be.

The week in writing

I worked most days on Reality Bomb and finished freewriting ideas for chapter 27 in Alice in Thunderland. I’ve moved on to chapter 28, but I’m thinking I have to rework these last four chapters before I get to the actual drafting. But I will get to it before the end of the month (!)

I took Friday and Saturday off after a full week of work. I just needed a break.

Copy edits for my forthcoming story in Pulp Literature arrived and were actioned promptly.

My application to the Writers Union of Canada (TWUC) was accepted (very quickly—within a week). I’m updating my CV, etc. today 🙂

Here’s how the week broke down:

I managed to reduce RB by a net 401 words for the week, a net -290 words for the month so far, and a net loss of 922 words on the draft overall.

I’m moving on to the next chapter using the pattern I started with Suzy, i.e., combining three chapters and paring down to a reasonable length. In RB, I have this nasty habit of repetition, like everything has to happen three times before I move on. I also write events in an inefficient order. Working on cleaning those issues up.

As I mentioned, I finished chapter 27’s freewritten outline and moved on to chapter 28 in Alice. This week, I hope to finish chapter 28, sketch out the epilogue, and tweak the whole climax and denouement in preparation for finishing the first draft.

In creating my map for Alice after drafting most of it, I’ve been marking in each chapter how it needs to change, what foreshadowing needs to be added, and how cause and effect can be strengthened. I think it’s a good approach. We’ll see how it works out and whether I want to use it for future projects.

I’ve blogged 1,615 words for the week and 2,843 words so far in the month.

Another Shaelin Writes video cracked open the concept of subtext for me. Look for that on tipsday. I really relate to her process and way of thinking about writing, even though she writes literary fiction and I’m a genre writer.

Filling the well

I attended a FOLD webinar, “How to Write a Great Book” presented by Evan Winter on February 11, 2023. It was a good presentation. Unfortunately, Evan’s journey to publishing was anomalous, i.e., he self-published his book, attracted the attention of a publisher, who helped him get an agent before moving forward with the deal.

I had my biannual appointment with the OBSP, AKA the booby squishing, on Monday. Not as bad as the first time.

I took my mom to our next hair appointment on Saturday.

What I’m watching and reading

In the viewing department, Phil and I finished watching The Legend of Vox Machina (Amazon), season 2. The series really strikes the perfect balance between comedy and drama. And most of the characters progressed in their arcs/got their moments to shine.

I also watched The Banshees of Inisherin (Disney +). Good movie, but it made my poor heart hurt.

Moving on to what I’ve been reading, I finished Sue Lynn Tan’s The Daughter of the Moon Goddess. There’s a lot of fighting and battles, but the story had an overall dreamy feel to it. It was gentle and lovely. I really enjoyed it.

And that was the week in this writer’s life.

Until next tipsday, be well and stay safe; be kind and stay strong. The world needs your stories!

Draft two and what it taught me

/ Melanie Marttila

I printed out and read through my first draft.  It was painful.  I made notes all over it and as I went, made additional notes on scrap paper.  Afterward, I physically mapped out my next revision.  At that point, it was just a bunch of pieces of paper floating around like a free-form puzzle on the table.  I looked for the pattern, made sense of it, and put the papers in ordered groups.

My scrap paper novel map

My scrap paper novel map

I revisited all of my previous work: the character sketches, plot sketches, and timeline.  The title changed again, finally to Initiate of Stone.  This emerged from the text itself, organically, the way I like it.

There were a number of metaphors and events that related to the earth element: taking shelter in caves and underground, the hidden people, who have a special skill with shaping the stone, whose father was the elemental spirit of the continent, now entombed in the mountains awaiting rebirth and acting as a kind of gatekeeper to the otherworld at the Well of Souls, the seal that must be broken to free the dark god is buried beneath the desert sands.

I decided to reinforce the theme and add to the images.  I made even more notes for all the changes I wanted to make and dove back into writing.

I wrote more, started playing with the prologue, nearly 50 pages on its own.  Each chapter now had a framing piece about the world, its history, and other things that I thought I couldn’t bring out in the story but wanted to share.  Characters developed further, names changed, existing plot lines developed, and new plot lines evolved.

I started sharing this revision out to select readers.  In retrospect, it was too early, but I got some excellent feedback from Scott Overton, then president of the SWG.

Part-way through, I abandoned the preface pieces, and decided that the prologue, though important for me to have written, was largely cut-worthy.  I redacted whole sections and added new ones.  I rearranged their order to make more sense with the timeline.

This time, the draft was close to 1200 pages.  I’d done a lot of cutting, so this was a surprise.

What I learned:

  • Step away from the novel between drafts.  You need figurative “space” to approach it fresh.
  • It’s okay to murder your darlings, especially if you keep previous drafts stored on your computer and backed up onto CD.  That way, you haven’t done away with them altogether.
  • Physical mapping is liberating.  Being able to see the structure of your novel, and to play with it, is extremely helpful.  It’s like putting a puzzle together.  Some pieces may seem similar, but they only fit together in one way.  Looking at the story in its concrete representation can help you to find the best fit.
  • Sometimes, you write things that don’t make sense, and you don’t see it until revision.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that to have to throw them out.  If there was a reason that you wrote it, try to figure out what the core intention was.  Don’t put too much intellectual pressure on it or you risk forcing it the wrong way, but if you realize why it was important to write it in the first place, that will give you the key to revising the section in a way that improves your story.

What has your revision process taught you?