My Journey with Dakotashi, Part III: Revision

Please see previous posts on Origins and NaNoWriMo.

My revision really started when I went to the Write Stuff conference in 2012. James Scott Bell was the pre-conference speaker and I've already written about how I found his book, Plot and Structure, to be enormously helpful so I won't go into how his philosophies shaped my revision, even though they have. Instead I want to talk about three important tools and how they helped me: a voice journal, the synopsis and Scrivener as means to look at character relationships.

A voice journal will probably be something different to every author, perhaps every character. I've read about it as a tool to get to know your character and his voice--looking for what your character tells you. What I did was less involved. I wrote a series of snippets in Dakota's voice. Each snippet isolated a moment of the story, focusing on Dakota's thoughts, feelings or description of something. My goal was to make him brim with attitude. I wanted to push the language.

Examples:

• First lines of my very first draft: There were moments when I enjoyed the notoriety of being the Bastard Prince, but tonight was not one of those times. My duty was to be the official escort of my niece, Princess Milani, but I couldn't focus. 
• After working on it as a snippet: People call me the Bastard Prince, and for good reason. Given that I was indeed a bastard in every sense of the word, I didn't understand the nerve of the woman before me, with her mocking little smile, implying that my mother was a whore. 
• Description of a character in 1st draft: I didn't appreciate how close he was standing to her or how they linked their fingers where they thought no one could see. Obviously, he had chosen to be more aggressive than appropriate in trying to win her affection. 
• My snippet description: He was sleek, reminding me of a crook running cons on the weak and unwary. Smiles always a little too sparkling. Confidence a little too relaxed. 

Most of these snippets made their way into my latest version of the manuscript in one form or another, and I will probably revise them more as part of the whole, but writing them out of context really allowed me to focus more on what I was writing rather than what was happening. The exercise became invaluable.

After the conference, I decided many of my scenes needed to be moved around, I wanted to build tension differently than I had and the clues Dakota followed had to have the right sequence. Scrivener of course was very handy, but I found changing the scene descriptions around each time I moved my "index" cards to be laborious (this would be even more true of actual index cards). So I turned to writing multiple synopses in my notebook. It sounds like a lot of tedious work as well, but it helped me see how things connected, how they flowed from one scene to the next. I wrote notes in the margins. What if this? I need to add this. There could be a way to replicate this process in Scrivener--I have a synopsis in there too that I refer to, but my notebooks are always with me and it was something I could easily work on at lunch. The changes I made to my plot really began to take form using this method. 

Finally, I wanted Dakota's relationships with the characters surrounding him to have a growth/change arc just as he did. So in Scrivener for each of the characters I was focusing on, I duplicated all their scenes and moved them to my Research Folder. The key here is that the information stored in my outline was also duplicated. I created new metadata just for this exercise and made sure it was visible. Then I made notes specific to that character: objective, conflict, view of Dakota. All without disturbing my main manuscript and outline. If necessary I made changes to the main outline.

After all of that, I read through the manuscript and made notes on how each scene needed to change. Some scenes stayed very similar, some needed to be almost completely rewritten, some were moved around, some were cut, while i wrote new ones. Then I started rewriting.

My rewrite involved a lot of planning, possibly as much as writing my original draft did. But even though it progressed in fits and starts for over a year, I believe it's the most comprehensive and systematic revision I've ever done. There is still a lot of work to be done (description!), but I am very happy with where I am and my fingers are crossed that most of my significant rewriting is complete.

My Journey With Dakotashi, Part II: NaNoWriMo

I love NaNoWriMo. There is something about writing 50,000 words in one gigantic mass of creativity that really appeals to me.

The idea of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That's approximately 1,667 words a day. You can plan and outline as much as you want before November, but you can't count any words written beforehand toward your total.

From past experience, I knew that I have trouble writing without an outline, so once I had my world and my main character it was time to get started figuring out what would actually happen in my story. As you know from my previous posts, I still write a lot by hand in notebooks, especially to plan and to brainstorm. 

I wrote several synopses of the plot, constantly asking what ifs, refining and developing the story. In June 2010, driving home from Ocean City, Maryland I had two epiphanies that changed what I had been thinking before. One had to do with Dakota's motivation and the other connected a secondary character more closely with the main plot. I continued to summarize and question and come up with ideas to make the story better. 

During the summer I also started writing voice experiments. I couldn't actually write the story (not and adhere to NaNoWriMo's honor system), but I could experiment with the narration from Dakota's POV as long as I started from scratch with those moments when November came around. It was during these voice experiments that I came up with a particular plot element and a character associated with it who has become one of my favorites. I'm not sure either of these would have come up if I had just started writing and not given myself the time (in preparation for NaNoWriMo) to take my time figuring out what was going to happen and to experiment in this way. 

I was also using Scrivener during this time to visually plot out my scenes. Scrivener is an amazingly flexible tools for writers of all stripes who want to be able to plot, outline, write, organize, edit and collect research in one program. You can tailor it to fit your particular needs. Dakotashi, however, would be the first time that I planned and wrote a novel from scratch using Scrivener.

Scirivener has an awesome feature called the cork board that mimics the classic plotting technique of using index cards to detail scenes and move them around. It's a lot easier on Scrivener, trust me! However, at the beginning of a project when my idea is still tumbling around in my mind collecting subconscious detritus and gaining mass, I still like writing in my notebooks--I haven't really started thinking of something as specific as a scene yet. However as NaNoWriMo grew closer, my scene ideas grew more detailed and found their way onto Scrivener where I could easily edit and move them around. 

Scrivener became even more useful to me during revision, but there were two tools that were immensely useful to me even while writing my first draft. Scrivener allows you to use color-coded "pins" with your index cards and also to "stamp" them. For one of my earlier books I use the pins to show POV. For this book, with only one POV, I didn't need to do that, so I decided to use the colors to indicate what plot thread and/or theme each particular theme was related to. Since the story takes place in a concentrated period of time, I used the stamps to show what day of the story it takes place. At a glance, I could see how many scenes were taking place during a day and what plot thread they were related to. 

NaNoWriMo went smoothly and I got to a point in the story that is still approximately the half way point today. After writing the first half, I think I worked on something else for awhile. Before NaNoWriMo 2011, I realized that I did not have a good enough handle on my villain so I spent more time working out exactly what was happening with him, even adding index cards for his actions, even though he would never have scenes written for him. Since there is a large mystery element to the story and I'd never written a mystery before, I also looked at all the clues that Dakota would find and what he would know when. 

During this second NaNoWriMo I decided that it took too long to retype things into my computer so I didn't do as much writing by hand. I also ventured out to write-ins for the first time and found them enormously productive. I still had 4,500 words to go on the last day, but I made it to 50k. I was really close to end of the story at that point and knowing myself, I might have pushed through to THE END as well, but I don't remember for sure. Altogether, I wrote 104,000 words. 

In Part III of this series, I'll talk about my revision process. 

My Journey with Dakotashi, Part I: Origins

While reflecting (and bragging!) about my writer's retreat experience, I took a look back at the four notebooks I've filled with notes about this particular book and decided to put some thoughts down/chronicle my journey before I forget everything about it entirely. I already didn't recall that my first notebook began in January 2010.

I usually only date the beginning (and maybe the end) of each notebook so the timing of what I wrote down inside is generally a mystery, however, I can manage an overview. 

The Idea

It was January 2010. I had recently completed my second writing (I actually rewrote it in 1st person) of another of my books for NaNoWriMo and was ready to tackle something new. A new-year's resolution may have been involved. I'd had the idea of combining cultures inspired by both Japan and England into one world/country for a long time, but with no story or characters attached.  

I finally hit on the idea of having exiles from a Japan-like country conquer parts of an England-like country. (This of course removes North America from the equation, but don't expect me to eliminate chocolate from my world!) The story, however, would take place hundreds of years after that, giving plenty of time for the cultures to intermingle--or not as the case may be. 

I don't recall my reasons for deciding on Regency England (the broader time-frame, not the actual 9-year Regency) as the inspiration time period, but it probably had to do with Gail Carriger's The Parasol Protectorate series (which is actually urban fantasy meets steampunk in Victorian England), Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (alternate history set during the Napoleonic Wars--with dragons!) and the numerous regency romance novels I have read over the years (favorite authors being Mary Jo Putney, Mary Balogh, Julia Quinn and Sherry Thomas). Of course, there is no "England" in my story. It's more of an alternate shadow-England.

There are lots of interesting things to explore in his world/time period, fertile potential for story ideas and conflicts. There is the clash between the two cultures, a war (not necessarily French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars, but some kind of war), politics, the disparity between the the classes and of course, the main character himself and all his backstory. 

The Character

I wanted this book/series to be different than the ones I've written before. I was inspired by these long urban fantasy series that go on and on, following one character having multiple adventures (Jim Butcher's Dresden series; Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse), but, unlike Gail Carriger, who I mentioned above, I didn't want to write an urban fantasy during any time period. However, the concept of a long series (hopefully!) required a character interesting enough to sustain interest over multiple books. 

My solution was to think of someone with such a rich backstory that an epic story could be written about his life before my story even starts. Unfortunately, I can't say too much about him without spoiling the story. Rest assured Dakotashi, or "Dakota" for short, lives between two cultures, two worlds and has a mysterious, layered and painful past. He is ripe for all kinds of conflict and angst. 

I'm probably also heavily influenced by Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vokosigan series, even though it is science fiction/space opera, because Mile Vorkosigan is an amazing character, who has the type of adventures--a little mystery, a little romance, a little politics, a little war--that I want my character to have over the course of the series. 

The Magic

Normally, the magic is something that I think of right away with my ideas/story concepts. It wasn't like that this time. I did some early research on Shinto and got some ideas for some Japanese-inspired magic and already planned on some Druid-inspired magic. When I first started writing I still had no idea what the magic was going to be like. I had the vague idea that it would be tied up with religion. 

I started my first notebook for Dakotashi in January 2010, but I think I had already made some notes elsewhere, possibly in Scrivener. The first backup from Scrivener I could find was from February 2010. I was planning on writing the first draft for NaNoWriMo in November 2010, but first I needed a plot to go along with my world and character. I'll be tackling that next part of My Journey with Dakotashi, in Part II: NaNoWriMo.

Writer's Retreat

Last week,  I took the opportunity of a new fiscal year and a fresh pot of vacation hours to go on a personal writing retreat. I found a place in an isolated little village in Vermont and did nothing but write, revise and research for five days. This was helped by a spotty internet connection and no cell service.

I was able to finish the big rewrite of my book that I have been planning for over a year and made some other bigger revisions that I only thought of recently as well. This included a 40k-word section rewritten/revised. Of that, 16k words that were either new scenes or completely rewritten.

I also started some research of Heian Japan and Regency England that will help me add layers of detail. To help with this I also read some about description and setting and did some exercises.

I got A LOT done.

I loved the opportunity to get large swaths of my book revised. I could really see the big picture and see how things fit together, how they should fit together but didn't, and how they could fit together if I wanted them to.