How I accidentally wrote a 300,000 word trilogy

When I first started writing PANDORA’S GENES, back in the early eighties, I had no idea that the book would consume not the year that it took me to write, nor the three more years it would take till publication, but rather--off and on--a chunk of the following thirty years.

I have written previously about how the book began as a mysterious dream, in which I had a hazy vision of a good man who was about to do something very bad for what he thought were good reasons. When I started writing I really had no idea where I was heading, and let the characters take me where they wanted to go. My original ending, which seemed logical to me, had the three main characters, Zach, Will, and Evvy, marrying each other in a triad, which was the most common form of marriage in the society I wrote about.

This is the first original cover for the paperback; at the insistence of a major bookbuyer it was withdrawn and another cover was made.

After I turned in my manuscript, I was shocked when my editor--who had bought the story as I had written it-- told me that the reading public was not ready for a marriage between two men and a woman, and I would have to change the ending accordingly.

So I changed the ending as requested, having Evvy agree to marry Will for the good of civilization, though we readers all knew that Zach was her true love. My editor pointed out that there was plenty of room for a sequel, so I wrote PANDORA’S CHILDREN, in which I detailed, through "artful" flashback, much of the story that occurred before the start of the first book. When  I turned this manuscript in, my editor made me take out almost all of the prequel material, which my subconscious and I continued to chew on.

Thirty years later, my editor was long since retired, the imprint I’d published with had disappeared, the entire publishing industry had changed, and I still couldn’t get the Pandora’s story out of my mind. I decided finally to write the story I wanted to write, PANDORA’S PROMISE. It starts a few hours after the close of the second book. Though Evvy and Will are still planning to marry, nothing has happened yet, and events propel a new story, following Zach in new adventures, while Evvy and Will become involved in quests of their own.

An entire section of this new book (about 1/4 of the whole thing) is devoted to the prequel--how the Change happened, and the ultimate connection of our characters with its early days. This time I wrote it in a way that is organic to the story, rather than as a traditional flashback. In the main story, Evvy sets off on a dangerous quest with Baby, her empathic fox-cat; while Zach meets some new animal characters, including  the River Clan of elephants, who now freely roam portions of the Great Plains. Along the way I got to explore some new societies, including one organized around a brutal futuristic form of football, and another that is connected with the mysterious Eye, which may or may not be a myth. And nobody made me to take these plot elements out!

For the record, I did have an excellent editor, who suggested many, many changes, most of which I incorporated. 

I feel that this book is by far my best, and that it encapsulates all the things I have most cared about in my life. It has turned out to be a more intense love story than I imagined, and I realize now that its seeds were sown more than thirty years ago when I imagined that unknown man riding into the yard of a poverty-stricken family, where he meets Evvy, the extraordinary young woman who becomes the heroine of the series. *


* (The original book, Pandora’s Genes, won an award from Romance Times in the year it was published, as “Best new Science Fiction of the Year.” I had not realized until I was notified of the award that I had also written a romance story.)

43. Now the Work Begins….

Okay, I have finished inputting all the previously-written material, as I posted about last week. I have around 30,000 words and exactly 99 pages. Since the threequel will need to be approximately the same length as the first two books in the series, 90-100,000 words, that means I have around 1/3 the material that I need.

Here are the pages I’ve been inputting all these weeks. I drew blue lines across pages that had already been put into the computer.

I am going to try to write about five new pages a day, which means I will have a complete rough draft in forty days.

Except, who am I kidding? I know myself, and I know I will never write that much that quickly. But I’ll try to write at least something new each day, and meanwhile will look at the other material that will need to be folded into what I have now. This will be an intense combination of original writing and revision, all at the same time.

As for the material I just finished inputting, there were numerous places where I needed to expand or make other changes. Mostly I didn’t do that, but instead indicated what would need to be done later. I put those things in brackets, as a reminder to myself. This is a good technique for any writer during the creation of a first or second draft. It is often easier to write the difficult but necessary bits later, after you’ve let it marinate in your unconscious for a while. For example, here’s part of a scene from page 96:

Evvy had expected something of this sort. Even so, it took all her will to keep from running, from calling out to Baby for help. This was, after all, part of her plan, which she hoped would soon bring her face to face with Katha.
The men roughly grasped her arms, then stood beside her, holding so tightly she nearly cried out. [details of surroundings]
“Take her to be prepared,” the headman said.

As indicated, I’ll have to include here more details of where she is, what it looks, sounds, and smells like. Wish me luck!

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Children,Pandora's Genes,revision,novel writing

42. Writing the Second Sequel

Writing the third book in the Pandora’s series--the “threequel,” as I call it-- is turning out to be a very strange experience. I’ve posted about how I wrote the first draft of Pandora’s Genes straight from my subconscious; and in contrast, how I carefully plotted out the young adult books I did for a series. This is different. I started this novel, which I’m calling PANDORA’S PROMISE, many years ago without any very clear idea of where it was going, except that it began as a direct follow-up to the first book’s sequel, Pandora’s Children.

                                       

I began writing as I advise in my post on how to keep going when you’re stuck, by writing a minimum of one sentence a night. As often happens when using this method, that one sentence often became two, three, or even a page or more. I wrote these sentences and pages over several months, and when I finished I had quite a pile of papers, which remained in my filing cabinet till a few weeks ago. When I decided to write the threequel, I pulled those pages out and started reading, but soon gave up. There was  so much material that I realized it would be easier to just start inputting, making changes as I went.

In the meantime, since I first wrote those pages, I had also made a start on two other science fiction novels, both of which had very strong ideas that I could not forget. Both were post-holocaust young adult novels. One took place in a traditional post-nuclear-disaster world (as opposed to the Pandora’s World, in which the disaster is recombinant DNA run amok); the other  was set in an unspecified future, blasted world.I never finished either of these books.

Once I started writing Pandora’s Promise in earnest, a couple of funny things happened. First, I very early on discovered that the societal ideas from BOTH the unfinished novels fit perfectly into my threequel. I believe my subconscious had been working on these ideas all these years, and perhaps it had given me the ideas in the first place for the Pandora’s world.

Second, I was astonished to find out that I had a lot more material than I recall having written. I am nearly through inputting the pages and I already have more than 25,000 words and nearly 100 pages. Typing these pages has been fascinating, because there is so much action and excitement, most of which I don’t remember at all.

I haven’t even started looking at the material from the two unfinished novels.
There is a lot of hard work ahead. I’ll need to go through all the already-written material to see what can be used in Pandora’s Promise, and will of course need to make many, many changes in the material that is now in my computer. I’ll probably need to re-read both Pandora’s books, to make sure I don’t put something in the threequel that directly contradicts the things I’ve already presented in the first two books.

But I’m looking forward to this work. Overall, I’m  very pleased with Pandora’s Promise so far. I find myself getting excited as I write and as I think about it. I have not felt this way in a very long time.

Note: I may not continue to write this blog every week as I get deeper into the threequel. If anyone reading this feels strongly that they would like me to continue weekly,  please email me or leave a message here. If you have any questions you’d like me to answer, let me know.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,writing sequels,Pandora's Children,plotting

38. Motivation: Why do your characters do what they do?

In a novel, motivation is the engine that drives your plot. WHY does Sabrina act the way she does? WHAT causes her arch-nemesis, the Zombie King, to relentlessly pursue her?

It is your job as author to know and communicate the answers to those questions. Another way of looking at your character’s motivation is to ask: what does she want?  The answer to this question is one of the six elements of a plot, and it must be answered. Whatever your character most wants must be important, and failure to achieve it must have serious consequences. 

Without something important at stake, your main character’s actions may seem random and readers won’t identify with her. You must also be aware of the motivation of the main secondary characters.

Several years ago, when I was writing a “horror” novel for my young adult series, Phantom Valley, my editor and I got into a lengthy argument because we disagreed on why a ghost was haunting the main character.

                                                       

That’s how important motivation is: we couldn’t agree on the resolution of the plot until we resolved the motivation of the ghost!

Note that motivation is not the same thing as conflict. Motivation is the WHY; conflict is often the WHY NOT. A good example can be seen in my first science fiction novel, Pandora’s Genes. At the beginning of the story we know that Zach’s primary motivation is to carry out the order of his leader, the Principal, to purchase and deliver to him a young girl, Evvy. But there are also important conflicts that bear on this motivation. For one thing,  the Principal’s directive goes against Zach’s own moral code. Other conflicts include those imposed by the environment (poison bats) and other characters (the brigands who want to kill Zach and kidnap Evvy).

Zach’s moral trepidations here are a good example of inner conflict; the poison bats and brigands are examples of outer conflict. A complex, well-thought-out character will be faced with many examples of both sorts of conflict.

A rule of thumb is that resolution of inner conflict results in a change in attitude, while solving an outer conflict results in a change in circumstance. In Pandora’s Genes, Zach comes to see that he was more complicit than he had believed in the Principal’s wrongdoing; while he eventually overcomes all the outer conflicts and returns home to a situation that is changed by his having resolved the inner conflict.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,novel writing,characterization,motivation

20. Basing fictional characters on real-life people

“Roman a clef,” which means “novel with a key,” is the term for novels and movies  in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional.

The most famous movie roman a clef is Citizen Kane, whose protagonist was based on the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. A more recent roman a clef is the novel and movie The Devil Wears Prada, in which  Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue Magazine, is thinly disguised as the character Andrea Sachs.

                                 Anna Wintour        

Now I happen to believe that all fictional characters are based in some way on real life people even if the author isn’t consciously aware of doing so. After all, we all learn human actions and motivations from the people we know, starting with our family members.

Peej, the protagonist of my YA novel, Going to See Grassy Ella, is based on my real-life sister Margaret Jane. In the novel, Peej survives her cancer, unlike my sister. For me, creating Peej was a way of allowing my sister to live again.

Margaret Jane Lance

As a rule, it’s not a great idea to create characters that are too close to someone in real life. This is so for a few reasons. First, most obviously, if your novel is successful, you might get sued.

But second, basing a character too closely on someone real can limit you. The whole point of fiction is to create scenes and situations. If you base your character on Uncle Fred, you may second-guess yourself. “I really want Adam Stark to commit murder during a sky-dive, but I know that Uncle Fred would never do that!”

It is always tempting to use your fiction to settle scores, and I imagine that a large number of fictional characters were written for just that reason, even though we readers are never let in on the secret. I have done that myself on more than one occasion, especially in the young adult series novels I wrote as Lynn Beach. For example, a certain girl who bullied me in junior high school was strangled by a ghost in one of these stories. Just saying.

The bottom line is to so thoroughly disguise any real person you use for a fictional character that he or she will never make the connection. Or at least won’t be able to prove it.

When I was first working on Pandora’s Children, a casual friend  who liked Pandora’s Genes asked me to name a character in the sequel after him. By the time he asked, all the important new characters but one had already been named. The remaining character was a villainous serving boy, and I did name him after my friend. When my friend read the book, he was furious. It turned out he wanted only a heroic character to bear his name

Tomorrow, a special guest post by Kate Fowler Kelley, on how to live with a novelist.

Technorati Tags: fiction writing,creating fictional characters,basing fictional characters on real life people

15 Novel writing: Three ways to keep going when you’re stuck

There is an inevitable moment--and sometimes more than a moment--when you get stuck somewhere in your novel. For some of us, this happens in the first few pages. But it is more likely to occur later on, when you already have a story, you have characters you understand and care about, but you just... can’t... write.... another... word.

For times like these, I recommend the following tricks. I know they work, because I use them myself.

1.  Probably the easiest way to get un-stuck is to write a scene that you know you can do, even though it does not belong where you are chronologically. For example, in Pandora’s Children, I was stuck in the section where the Principal is recovering from his injuries but not sure what he will do next. This is because *I* wasn’t certain what he would do next.

At first I tried to solve this problem by inventing a diplomatic war with a leader to the north, but this did not fit either organically or dramatically. Since I knew what Zach was up to, however, I went ahead and started on the Road Men story. For some reason this jogged my brain, and I was able to move on to the Principal’s next actions, which included his attempts to improve long-distance communications in the District.

2.  A somewhat related technique that works particularly well if you are stuck near the beginning of the story is to write a scene or scenes that take place BEFORE the story begins. This can be very freeing, because you do not have to make this scene mesh with any other scene in the book. It can also be an excellent way to get to know your characters better.

I wrote many, many prequel scenes for the Pandora’s books. Some of them made it into the final publications, and some may turn up in part three. All of them gave me a better understanding of Zach and Will and the creation of the District.

3. If all else fails, my standby cure for writer’s block is to write one sentence every night before you go to bed. If you want to keep going beyond one sentence, that’s fine, and it’s common to find that sentence stretching into a paragraph or even a few pages. But the iron-clad rule is ONE SENTENCE EACH NIGHT. You aren’t allowed to go to sleep until you have done that.

I actually wrote most of the first draft of my YA novel, Going to See Grassy Ella, this way. I didn’t have it particularly plotted out until I was pretty far along in the story. But I had two characters I adored, with voices I was very comfortable with. So I wrote a little bit each night until I finally had most of a complete story and was able to finish the rest of the book relatively easily.

Tomorrow, another special Blogathon post, this one on my “second act.”

Technorati Tags: Cures for writer's block,fiction writing tips

13. The Political World of Pandora’s Genes

The other day I received the following question in an email from a friend who has been reading these posts:

What drove the politics of the story (the political intricacies – were they sourced on anything in particular)?

As it happens, the political setting in the Pandora’s World fascinates me. When I was a teenager, my father shared his interest in ancient warfare with me, and then in my twenties I read the Greek novels of Mary Renault. They all gripped me, particularly Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy, which were both about the education and military career of Alexander the Great. This rather unusual interest for a young woman led me to ponder:

• What makes a good leader?
• How do you deal with an excess of young men (and a dearth of women)  in a society?
• What are possible solutions to the never-ending conflict between superstition and reason (or, put another way, religion and science)?
• Can one man, one strong leader, make a difference in the tide of history?

Alexander the Great

These questions were all put into the head of my leader, the Principal. I touched on each of them to greater or lesser degrees throughout the two books.

For example, Will, the Principal, models himself on Alexander the Great. He feels that a good leader must be strong and decisive; that hearing all sides of an argument is important, but that one person alone must make all final decisions. This view leads him to scorn the leaders of the Garden, the allied enclave that is run and inhabited by female scientists, whose leaders rule by consensus rather than fiat.

The question of how to deal with excess young men in a society has vexed many civilizations throughout history. In modern China, for example, leaders are only beginning to confront this issue as a result of their one-child-per-couple policy, which has led to a shortage of marriageable women.

In the Pandora’s world, Will takes large numbers of young men into his structured army/police force, which is how many societies have handled this problem in the past. Polyandry is an accepted form of marriage in his District.

In Zach’s travels, he encounters the Road Men, who form roving bands of “engineers” and “pullers,” who worship dead automobiles as they pillage the countryside, taking women as spoils. In the third book in the series, Zach will encounter another society that has found yet another way to handle the gender imbalance, this time based on modern US rituals.

The next issue,  the conflict between superstition and reason, is dramatized in the Pandora’s world by the clash between the Principal, who wants to try to restore as much as possible of the old vanished civilization, and the superstitious Traders, who have elevated fear of technology to a religion.

As to whether one man can make a difference to the tide of history, the Principal certainly believes the answer is yes, and that he himself will be featured prominently when history books are again written.

What none of the Principal’s views take into account are what used to be called Acts of God, which can blight the plans of even the most enlightened ruler. This is what my characters will face in the third book, the one I am writing now.

Tomorrow: BLOGATHON SWAP DAY, in which my blog will be written by fellow Blogathoner Anne Wainscott, and hers will be written by me.

Technorati Tags: Alexander the Great in literature,political fiction

11. Keeping Track: Continuity and Consistency

The other day, in response to my post on mapping novel locations, a reader sent me a question by email:

When I've tried fiction, the main problem I've had is consistency.  In other words, I would write something on page 98 that was inconsistent with something I had written on page 28.  How do you get around this?  Do you start from the beginning every time you sit down to write more?  Or do you say, who cares?

In another life long ago, when I was one of several writers for a soap opera, there was always someone in charge of “continuity.” This person made sure that when the Miller family sat down to a dinner of roast beef they did not get up three episodes later from a delicious chicken cacciatori. Every novelist needs to be her own continuity expert. 

To answer my reader’s last question first, of course you must care about consistency! One of the surest ways to lose readers is to write a novel with random character or plot changes. Can you imagine a movie in which a character starts out as Nicolas Cage but ends up as John Travolta? (Okay, bad example, since there IS such a movie. Never use Nicolas Cage in an example.) My point is that when you’re dealing with a large cast of characters and a complicated plot, it’s not always easy to remember everything. Here’s what I recommend to my writing students:

• Make charts and graphs. I do this in addition to the maps I draw of the locations for various scenes. Pandora’s Genes  had three major characters and dozens of lesser characters. It took place in several locations over a period of five years. I pieced together several sheets of paper and made a long timeline that mapped the most important scenes. It showed me where and when everyone was at any given time in the novel.
• Keep notebooks or index cards—or the electronic equivalent--for each character and plot point. I’m an index-card kind of writer myself, but I know other novelists who keep a small notebook or electronic data-base section for each character and each important plot thread. In Pandora’s Children there is an important subplot about a spy among the Principal’s closest aides. I kept careful notes on the clues I left, to make sure both that they were not too obvious and that I did not forget them later.
• Be flexible. Sometimes unexpected plot twists will turn up and ruin all your best-laid plans. Or a character will decide to do something you hadn’t foreseen. When this occurs, if the change seems right for the book, then go with it. But always go back and change earlier scenes so that they match up with the new fictional reality. When you do, you’ll find that all those charts and index cards make your job a lot easier.

Tomorrow: Outline or Wing It?

Technorati Tags: novel writing

9. Keeping it Real: how to make imaginary locales seem realistic

In yesterday’s post I told you about the maps I consulted for my fictional works located in Washington, D.C., and New York City. They helped me keep the basic details of my books true-to life. Even in the case of Pandora’s Genes, which takes place toward the end of the present century, knowing what those places looked like back in the 1990’s helped me to imagine what a century of neglect and bad weather would do.

But what about completely imaginary locales? What about, say, fantasy or science fiction locations? One of the commenters on yesterday’s post is an sf writer who sets her stories on made-up planets. She says that having been an atmospheric scientist in real life helps her to construct (in imagination) her locales.

I have never been a scientist, but I’ve read a lot of science and science fiction, and that has helped me have a feel for many possible science fictional locations.
My hard-sf novella THE PTORRIGAN LODE takes place on a space station in the asteroid belt. There are no maps for such a place, but I’ve been visiting such structures in science fiction stories since I was a teenager (for example, in The Rolling Stones, by Robert A. Heinlein), so  I already had  a general idea of what such a place (one with artificial gravity) might be like.

I did some further research on the web, perusing scientific articles describing the sort of space station I had in mind. I drew my own map of “Station,” so I could keep track of where the main character was at any given time, and how he would move from level to level. And I spent a lot of time inside his head, trying to imagine how it would feel to live in a sealed, closed station, no matter how big it is.

When writing about my fictional space station I did not go into a great deal of detail, because the novella is largely a story of character, but I worked to make those details I included seem plausible and familiar to readers of today. Jay’s small cubicle on Station,  for example, is small and bare, with everything built-in, but he keeps an old-fashioned acoustic guitar on the shiny metal wall.

A few short scenes toward the end of the novella take place inside a small spaceship and on the surface of a tiny asteroid. To create these, I mainly drew on my years of reading sci fi books and watching sci-fi movies. My general knowledge of science let me know what seemed realistic and what didn’t, and my imagination helped me to feel what the characters felt in these places.

I think the takeaway here is that research is essential to constructing the scaffolding of your novel, but it takes hard thought and imagination to bring the story to life.

Tomorrow I will continue with what keeps it “real,” in a discussion of continuity.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,Pandora's Children,The Ptorrigan Lode,fiction writing,constructing imaginary locales,creating realistic backgrounds

8. Where in the world are we? The novel’s geographical and local setting

For those who haven’t read Pandora’s Genes, or who have read it but couldn’t get a fix on the location, it happens mostly in the area in and around Washington, DC. I have lived and worked in the Washington area, and always liked it, especially the historical buildings and the beauty of the surrounding countryside.

I never said directly that is where the book takes place, but dropped plenty of hints, including the fact that the area ruled by the Principal is known as “the District.” . A number of scenes take place in the Principal’s private office, which has “rounded walls.” Other parts of the White House are featured too. I needed to get a detailed map of the White House for some of this material.

Many scenes take place on the Mall, which they actually do call “the mall” in the Pandora’s books, and a crucial scene occurs at the Lincoln Memorial, which is described but not named. Zach’s and Evvy’s travels take place through Maryland into Pennsylvania and Ohio.

A scene from the Prequel that made it into Pandora’s Children takes place in the Metro. The Principal and Zach begin their final assault on the corrupt, evil President from a distant station across the river. The only identification that survives are the letters A SQUA. Which were on the sign for Virginia Square, the station near my parents’ apartment in Arlington.

Even though I was familiar with all these locations, I consulted maps, and even made a map to keep track of where my characters were at any given time. After writing my first draft, I revisited the Mall area to refine my descriptions, though I never did visit the White House (“the Principal’s Great House”).

I’ve made use of maps and personal visits for other books as well, most notably my YA novel GOING TO SEE GRASSY ELLA, which takes place mostly in New York City (where I lived for 20 years). After finishing the manuscript, again I went back and double-checked my recollection, especially for the area where the girls encounter the seedy Elvin Hotel.

Even though your work is fiction, it’s important to be as true to life as possible. This will give your made-up parts added credibility. Anything that CAN be checked, MUST be checked. Maps are easy enough to find and to consult. But what about fictional places? Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at keeping it all as real as possible.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes Pandora's Children Going to See Grassy Ella Writing tips Fiction writing

7. Five Reasons to Write a Novel*

Of all the writing classes I’ve taught, my favorite has been Writing the Novel, because--as I always tell my students--writing a novel is one of the most rewarding things a person can do in life.

I know from my own experience and what my novel-writing students have told me that the most rewarding part of writing a novel is not the finished product, but the process of writing it. So without further ado, here are five reasons to write a novel*:

*whether it gets published or not

1.  It’s a chance to play god. Do your family, friends and colleagues sometimes disappoint you? Do you become hoarse trying to explain to friends what you REALLY mean? Well, writing a novel offers a chance to create other human beings from scratch. You can give them any character traits you wish (though many characters will disconcertingly take on a life of their own).

Many fictional characters are based on people the writer knows. You need to disguise them, of course, but within the constraints of libel this is a chance to improve your brother-in-law’s character or get even with him.  As a teen, I wrote stories about my ex-boyfriends. My mother once said about a fellow I dated but broke up with after two years: “You’re not over him, you know. You haven’t written a story about him yet.”

2.   Writing a novel will Improve your writing skills. Whether you write nonfiction, term papers, or emails, writing a novel is an excellent way to improve your writing skills. A novel is long. It’s offers lots of practice. For your novel to work, you must learn to handle point of view, write good descriptions, and master dialogue. It’s a great chance to learn by doing. I will discuss each of these writing skills in future posts.

3. Novel-writing forces you to get organized. Remember how hard it was to write your first term paper? You had all this research and no clear way to put it together. The same thing happens when you are writing a novel. You may start out with a strong story that grabs you (as the white-hot draft of the first part of Pandora’s Genes did me). But after the first 100 or so pages are down on paper, what then? Do you keep ideas on note cards? Write a formal outline?

A novel forces you to be organized in your daily life too. Writing a novel is a real commitment, of time and psychic resources. You will never be able to do it if you don’t schedule regular time to work on it.

4. Novel writing is a chance to learn more about yourself, both as a writer and as a human being. You will quickly learn which writing situations are easiest for you--and which most difficult. For me, writing Pandora’s Genes taught me that I’m good at depicting thoughts and dialogue, and that the hardest thing for me to write is description, especially of people. Knowing this, I always pay extra close attention to anything I read to see how other writers handle this technique.

5. Writing a novel is fun! When I’m writing a novel,  I find myself thinking about it in odd moments, scribbling notes on napkins, having imaginary dialogues with myself. Writing a novel is the surest way I know to wake up my brain and make me feel alive. This is beginning to happen with the new Pandora’s novel I am currently working on.

Looking back to writing the rough draft of Pandora’s Genes over twenty years ago, I remember  thinking, “This is what life is about. This is what I am meant to do.”

Tomorrow: WHERE in the world are we?

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,Pandora's Children,novel writing,writing tips

6. How to Avoid Writing

This post is for anyone who has ever written anything on assignment--from a commissioned book to a term paper. If you are like most writers, your mind will find any number of things to do other than actually writing your assignment.

If it is a term paper or an article, the temptation is to over-research. I have done that many times with nonfiction books and articles. I was surprised to find out that over-researching was also an occupational hazard when I began writing Pandora’s Genes.

Like character names, research is important to the final product, but at some point you need to say “enough” and start writing. I did not do much research when I first started writing Pandora’s Genes, because of the way it spilled out. But when I got to the remaining three parts of the book, I needed to do geographical and scientific research, particularly on genetics. I also had to research the history of technologies, and some ancient fighting methods. This was all fascinating, but I had to force myself not to overdo.

Here’s what I learned about avoiding Paralysis by Research: begin with general research only. For example, learn the basics of how aerobic exercise works, but don’t worry about the specifics of how many calories each form of exercise burns per minute. You can always find and insert that information later. But if you sweat the small stuff in the beginning, you may become so taken by the details that you never even start the actual writing.

Once you have a good grasp of the period, or the genetic mechanism, or whatever your overview involves, just start writing and keep going. When you come to something for which you need further research, put a squiggly line under it or otherwise highlight it to research more fully later, after you have finished your draft. Then forget about it.

A related problem a lot of beginning--and established--writers have is spending too much time on small grammatical or stylistic details. Trying, for example, to get that first sentence (or paragraph, or even chapter) JUST RIGHT before going on. This practice is a trap, because perfection in writing is elusive and usually impossible. Besides, when you get farther along in the story you’ll often find that you didn’t need that sentence or paragraph in the first place. You may also find that the first thing you wrote down was fine as is.

To become a professional writer you must learn to be ruthless with yourself. Do not allow yourself too much time and energy on procrastination of any sort. For most of us, It’s much better to just keep writing and work out the details later.

Tomorrow: 5 reasons to write a novel.

Technorati Tags: Pandora's Genes,Pandora's Children,Writing tips

5. What’s in a Name?

When I used to teach novel-writing, I noticed that some students spent way too much time deciding what to call their characters. I don’t mean to suggest that your characters’ names are not important--they are. But often getting to know the character better will lead you to the perfect name.

In the case of Pandora’s Genes, the Principal is a case in point. When I began writing, he was known only as “the Principal.” That came to me without much thought, but it made sense in that I wanted a Leader-sounding name, but didn’t want to use “President” or “Commander” or “Commissar” or any similar title. “Principal” worked for me, because the Principal sees himself not only as a leader, but as an educator. His role model is Alexander the Great, who endeavored to spread Greek civilization throughout the known world.

I was well into Part II before I learned the Principal’s  given name: “Will.” This worked for me also, because he has a very strong will. The name and the title are used more or less interchangeably throughout the book, but I tended to use “the Principal” more when he was acting as a leader and “Will” in private moments. When other characters (like Zach) are displeased with him, or otherwise feeling distant, they tend to refer to him by the title, rather than his given name.

Zach’s name took a long time for me to settle on--I think I didn’t have it until near the end of the entire manuscript (rough draft). At first, I called him “diSachs,” because that was the name I’d seen in the dream I had that started my writing. I realized after a while that this probably came from a historical character in my favorite opera, Hans Sachs, from Die Meistersinger. In the opera, Hans Sachs is tempted by and perhaps in love with a young girl, which resonates with Zach’s situation, but the name never seemed right to me, so I changed it to Zach, and that worked.

Evvy’s name came from a couple of preteen kids who were hanging out at the running track in Riverside Park in NYC, where I used to jog. One afternoon shortly before I began writing Pandora’s Genes, I was stretching on the steps while the kids argued with each other. I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful the girl was. “Darn it, Evvy, stop that!” the boy snapped at her. I’d never heard that name before and loved it instantly; it was the only name I ever considered for my heroine.

Tomorrow: distractions that can prevent you from writing

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4. Who Are These Guys?

“The Principal was in a rage.” So begins Part II of Pandora’s Genes. As with the first part, the second seemed to come to me as if it had been dictated. I still didn’t know much about the Principal; but as I wrote more I came to  learn the following things about him: that he was a brilliant and charismatic leader who was dedicated to restoring civilization; that he was given to drinking too much and to volatile mood swings; that he hated and distrusted women, yet had a compulsion for sex with very young girls; and that he loved and trusted Zach above all others and found it difficult to carry on without Zach’s presence and counsel.

The story is written throughout from alternating points of view. As I continued to write, into Parts III and IV, I came to know Zach, Evvy, and the Principal as well as any real people in my life. I thought about them constantly, and dreamed about them.

I am sure that for most fiction writers each character comes from a part of our own personality, which is transformed through  creative alchemy. Obviously I have never been the charismatic leader of a society, nor a brave warrior; I have, however, been a fourteen-year old girl, yet I never had any more doubt about what Zach or the Principal would do than I did about Evvy’s actions.

I’ve been asked which of the characters I most identified with, and though you might think it would be Evvy, it was actually the Principal. He is a very complex man, and though several readers have expressed misgivings about his sexual predilections, I always saw him as a very sympathetic character, a good but deeply flawed man.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you a bit more about the Principal and where he and the others got their names.

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3. But What if Your Car Catches It?

Part I of Pandora’s Genes, which was a little over 100 pages long (25-30,000 words), introduced me to two of the main characters: Zach, the good man I had seen in my dream, and Evvy, a courageous fourteen-year-old girl whose parents have sold her to the Principal. All we (and I) know about the Principal at this point is that he is the ruler of the strange and dangerous country where Zach and Evvy live, and that Zach is his most trusted aide.

In this first section of the book, we see that plants and animals are for the most part mutated forms of animals we know today (the dangerous poison bats, for example, are mutations, as are the extremely bright and possibly empathic fox-cats); we learn that most women die if they give birth to female babies, resulting in an extreme scarcity of women; and we learn that these frightening conditions were caused by something that happened long ago called the Change.

Flashback: It is five years earlier, a year when oil spills were big news as they have become again today. I happened to read a piece in the Wall Street Journal about a natural bacterium that breaks down  oil; some scientists were working to make it a more efficient oil-eater.

I grew up with science fiction, and one of my great interests is genetics, so I was intrigued by the possibilities. What would happen, I wondered,  if the bacteria were made too efficient? What if they were to get out of control, creating a new “disease” that would attack machines that use oil? What, I wondered, if your car catches it?

As I embarked on Part II of Pandora’s Genes, I realized that the dangerous world in which Zach and Evvy found themselves was the very one I had imagined years earlier, the result of a scientific advance gone terribly awry.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about my introduction to the Principal, and how all of the pieces began to fit into a coherent narrative.

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2. Thurber’s Mud

For me, and for most writers I know, the hardest part of writing is the first step, getting something down on paper.

Throughout my writing life, I have found that the best way to get that first draft down is either to do as I did with Pandora’s Genes--to write as quickly as possible, not censoring or otherwise interfering with the flow--or, if nothing at all will come, to write a MINIMUM of one paragraph each night before going to bed. I’ve discovered that the one paragraph often turns to two, to four, to a page or more. Either method leaves me with a very sloppy draft, what James Thurber referred to as “mud.”

The 100 or so pages I had when I finished my paroxysm of creating Part I of Pandora’s Genes, was most definitely mud: full of incomplete sentences, repetition, inconsistencies, infelicities of language, abbreviations of things I would want to fix later. But the important parts were there: the basic story and two of the three main characters.

Learning how to turn a very rough draft into professional prose was for me a big part of the process of becoming a professional writer.  I will have more to say about this in a later post, but basically it has always been a matter of trial and error, trying first one thing and then another, seeing what fits, removing things that don’t fit or moving them to a better place.

Ah, I hear you asking, but how do you know if something fits or not? I believe that this knowledge can only come with experience, and that experience must include lots of reading of other people’s work--the classics, bodice rippers, The Wall Street Journal, children’s books, whatever you enjoy. It’s also necessary to read and re-read your own work. Is this sentence smooth? Hasn’t that word already been used sixteen times in the same chapter? Is this really the way someone would talk? Reading aloud, is the rhythm right, not only in the dialogue but in the exposition?

In a later post I’ll give an example of how I cleaned up the “mud” in one problematic passage of Pandora’s Genes. But tomorrow I will return to the book’s genesis, and show you how The Wall Street journal figured into it.

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1. The beginning of Pandora’s Genes

This is my first post for the 2012 WordCount Blogathon, which takes place all of May. 

I was already a professional writer, mostly of adult nonfiction and series books for children, when I wrote my first adult novel, Pandora’s Genes. It began as a dream, just after I had finished a long, research-heavy book.

In the dream, I saw a good man who was about to do something very bad for what he thought were good reasons. The dream was fuzzy about what he was doing and why, but the feelings when I woke up were sharp and real. Who was this man? What was he about to do? Why was he going to do it? I really had no idea, but the thoughts were so insistent that I sat down and started typing… and basically didn’t stop until I had a rough draft of the entire first part of Pandora’s Genes. This first writing took me about three weeks, and it was essentially all I did during that time. .

This was the first and so far only time I have written something long this way; it was almost as if it were being dictated to me. The characters and situations seemed to arrive on the page of their own accord, and I worked as quickly as I could, because I wanted to find out what would happen next. The process was very exciting, mentally and yes, physically. I later described it to a friend as “like having a three-week long orgasm.”

It was six years from the first writing before the book was published, but the basic kernel for the entire story was there, then.

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Me and Zach*

I have signed up for a blogathon challenge.  This will involve blogging every day for a month, starting May 1 and ending on May 31.  I am doing this partly because of Kindle KDP, in which I have some books enrolled.  These are my first conventionally-published science fiction novel, Pandora's Genes, Pandora's Children (which is not enrolled), and The Ptorrigan Lode, a novella that was never previously published.  I have also enrolled Going to See Grassy Ella, my favorite of my children's books.

If you enroll a book exclusively in KDP, you are allowed five promotions (making the book available for free) per quarter. This has been demonstrated to lead to increased sales.  I have offered Pandora’s Genes for free three times, and have given away probably 4000 copies.  As for sales, so far I have sold several dozen copies of the book.  But the interesting thing is that one to three weeks after each promotion I sell more copies of Pandora's Children then of the original book.  It seems clear that people who have read the first book want to find out what happens next.  So my plan is to now write the third novel in the series, which I have been thinking about for many years.

The writing of the first two Pandora’s books, and my progress on the third book, will be the main subjects of my blog posts during the Blogathon.

*Zach is one of the three main characters in the Pandora’s books.