ieva melgalve » ending

holding back

ieva — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:21:57 +0000

My strategy on beginnings vs middles is like this:
(and a word of caution here, it doesn’t give for the best structure or story arc or whatever, but it does make writing interesting throughout the novel)
on beginnings, I hold back as much as I can, giving the minimum of what I know to readers and my characters. I lure them in, I let them reveal themselves in what they think are normal, everyday situations when they’re really not; I listen to their voices, I let them tell who they are, I give them a last-moment opportunity to become something more than they were scheduled for me.
Then, when things get a bit boring, I hurl everything I remember I had on them, I bomb them with information, disasters, problems, horrible dreams, and all-the-things-I-thought-sequel-should-cover. I believe firmly that you never can run out of disasters, not when you get in the spree. That’s the middles.
Oh, and then there’s endings when I carefully pick up the threads and tie them, careful as not to mess them up by brutality OR by being too respectful of the novel world as it is now.
But I have a long time till the ending.

The Keyman is Keyboy

ieva — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:21:06 +0000

I figured out my middle/ending for The Keyman, who transformed to Keyboy somewhere along the road. That’s most of what I’ve done for the last few days.
It’s actually weird, how this story evolved from a dream I had, a very vivid, movie-like dream. I woke up and typed it in a new document. Then, I rewrote it from memory in my notebook. Then, I proceeded to write the history of that moment.
Then, after much banging my head against the wall, I realized that the first scene was the only scene that didn’t fit in the story at all.
Now, I’m fairly happy with the result, and will be until the moment when the critiques start coming in. Yay me.

sex vs cuddling

ieva — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:11:23 +0000

Who would have thought that I’ll obsess so much about a such a simple matter.
Namely, whether or not Vega should have sex with that guy she’s in love with and who is in love with her, although it all happens in their weird mage-style that never allows for real emotional closeness.
Well, I think that if they had sex then it has to be gratifying, and it has to open both of them up in ways they’ve never known before. (Which means I should show it because it’s a crucial scene, but dumping a sex scene in a novel where there has been no sex whatsoever–these folks could propagate vegetatively for all I’ve said–feels as awkward as not giving a gratifying sex scene at the end of a long yearning romance.)
I could probably push their relationship to that (now, they’re just cuddling and seem to be perfectly happy this way, well, as happy as they can get at least). However, I don’t think it’ll work. It just won’t. She isn’t ready physically or emotionally, and I’m afraid that he is the type who waits until the wedding and masturbates furiously twice a day to get the steam out. (The masturbation part doesn’t appear in the novel either. Actually, I have trouble remembering a quality masturbation scene in any novel, even if they have steamy sex. Oh well.)

Anyhow, the bottom line is that unless something weird happens in the last 3-4 K, my romance line will end with holding hands at the end of the road and perhaps not even a kiss. Not like those shameless Disney movies, ugh.

counting the days

ieva — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:31:16 +0000

I have written novels before, but never before have I had the ending to tie together so smoothly. Usually, I just discarded the lesser threads along the way, assuming they weren’t important enough, or ended with a protagonist deciding he didn’t care about anything else than a single problem he was having, something in that vein. Now, I’m neatly tying up most of the ends in a coherent fashion, and I think that all untied bits will gladly wait until the edits.
And did I say already that I really want to type The End in my document?
I guess though that I’ve been so reluctant about writing (I wrote 900 words yesterday, but I had to force myself to do that) because Vega made a very creepy choice and I actively loathed the pat she was about to take. It’s a good thing that I dragged her out of it just an hour ago.

If I really applied myself to that, I guess I could finish Vega until Monday, but I still have The Keyman on my shoulders, so probably I won’t rush it just yet.

new home

ieva — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:53:16 +0000

I’m sorry for the long hiatus in this blog – it’s just now that I’ve somewhat regained my senses after moving and the computers (including the server) are back online.
For three days, I didn’t write a word. Now I’m thinking that probably I should have because technically, I had the time even if not the concentration, and I think writing would have helped me to cope with the stress and emotions better. Now, I’m swamped in melancholia and, well, I’m fine today, but yesterday I was fragile beyond belief.
Wordcount is 1400+ for Tuesday and 600+ for this morning. Not that bad. I think I’ll have the time to write a total of 4000 words this week and finish Vega on the next. And snatch some time to write a short story in between.

moving on

ieva — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:20:14 +0000

So, it seems that I have a new “not-quite-nosebleed” wordcount for a day, namely, 1K words on a working day. (Given that I’m not miserably stuck, that I’m not using my writing time to work on a short story, and I’m distracted some other way… but then, I can grab 20 minutes or so in the evening to fill in.) Weekends are quite unpredictable, but I think that mostly I can find some time to fill in for days when I didn’t work in the weekdays.
Yesterday, I did 1200 words and some planning. For a moment, I was scared that I’ll end up without a good ending, but it turned out that I had been doing the planning wrong. The winning approach was a mindmap with two main problems of the story that needed resolution, and fill in things that I knew I had to have. Also, I allowed my loverboy to make a right decision instead of going his usual blunder-correct way. I believe he’s quite happy with me now.
I still have to figure out a new short story to write for critters and read The Longest Night for final edits. So this will be a busy week even with my improved speed.

the tip of the saturday

ieva — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:25:15 +0000

I am currently working on two things simultaneously, a short story and a novel. That’s my new way of getting past writer’s block (at least to the point where it becomes intolerable): writing something else that I have to write anyway.
I’m approaching a difficult point in my novel, a point that also marks the beginning of the ending as it will be the major turnover of my protagonist’s character. I hope that I’ll be able to find her even more higher point where to jump from here. I think yes: there’s still love and sacrifice, that should be higher up the ropes than revenge.

Anyway, I just found a cool trick to get over a tricky beginning of the scene. When I’m pondering how to do the entrance or the description or whatever, and I just don’t see it and can’t get myself started, I ask myself: is this essential to the plot? No? Then I don’t have to write it, at least not now. Next: what is essential to the plot in the planned scene? Good, then write it. And if the description is necessary, stick it in later.
Off to actually write something now

the day after slackaday

ieva — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:08:38 +0000

Yesterday, I did almost everything but write. Now, it’s even hard to remember what exactly. Well, I was to a couple of performances, but that was in the late evening.
Anyhow, it all left me with slightly less than 1000 words to write today. I can do that, theoretically.

I fear though that with my quick idea to “wing the ending” I might have very nearly ruined this chapter. There are interesting things for sure, but I’m lucky that my brain kicked in at the last moment to give me something meaningful instead of “wow, now *this* special effect would look cool; let’s do this!”.
So, well, yea, I guess I must be careful on the road even though the end seems so near. (It’s not quite near, there are still ~20 K to go, but I am now wrapping things up instead of inventing new and shiny trouble.) Also, I guess I’ll have to re-work my outline-in-progress as some things I considered important got
trumped by that new shiny stuff.

Also, I’m quite a bit at loss about how to outline my NaNo novel. It felt so easy in theory. Now it feels almost impossible, all the ideas bland, all the characters–cartoon cutouts. Ah well. Not that I’ll do that today anyway.

rejection kicks ass too

ieva — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:28:42 +0000

Well, of course, it doesn’t.
However, writing after rejection kicks ass because I’m having fun writing, even though I had all reasons to feel discouraged. Which means two things:
a) I am really writing because I like writing (which is cool, as it is a reason less dependent on others),
b) I am getting used to rejections (which is cool too, because that’s part of the job, especially for me, I guess).
So I wrote 500 words on the tram today, and it seems that lately I’ve been getting ~500 words on the tram all the time. Basically, I can write 2500 words a week while not overexerting myself and taking the weekends off. That means full-blown novel (80 K) in seven months, thus a novel a year (considering edits), and oh yes, I’m good at maths. The funny aspect being that if I ever get a driver’s licence and go to work by car, all this carefully laid-out plan to write, hmmm, 40 novels until I get retired, will go down the drain.
Also, I decided to pretty much wing the ending. I now have ~20 K to write, and I think I can’t mess up big time. It’s logical to plan in the beginning when a small mistake can create an avalanche effect, but now I think I cannot mess up the whole novel, I can mess up the ending only.
As far as I know myself, I’m more likely to mess up the ending by writing cautiously and reminding myself not to go over the board. That’s something that would be very hard to fix because editing is certainly not the time when I go wild and write something crazy and mindsweeping. So I’m writing crazy NOW and tune it down, if necessary, in edits.
That frees up a lot of time for NaNoWriMo planning as well as my usual doodling around.