Introduction

This exercise focuses on sentence length and its effects.

The exercise requires multiple revisions, so allow yourself plenty of time.

The Excercise

First draft. Write a piece in 3rd person that includes activity of some kind, but no dialogue. Start your piece any way you like. Write the first draft using your usual process. Write it as long as you need it to be, but try for at least 500 words, to give yourself enough material to work with.

First revision: Short sentences. Rewrite the piece using sentences no longer than 10 words each. No sentence may be longer than 10 words. Write the best short sentences you can.

Second revision: Long sentences. Rewrite the piece using sentences no shorter than 25 words each. Every sentence must be at least 25 words long. Write the best long sentences you can.

If writing either of these lengths is easy for you, adjust the lengths until it becomes difficult. If you usually write sentences of 10 words or fewer, use a maximum of 7 words per sentence, or 5 words. If 25 word sentences are a breeze, try 30 words. The point is to challenge yourself by working outside of your comfort range in order to observe how sentence length effects a piece. Within these restrictions, write the best sentences, the best paragraphs, and the best piece you can.

Write each revision as long as you need it to be. Make sure that each sentence within each version make sense, and that each version makes sense as a whole. w Analyze the effects of sentence length. Analyze your three drafts (the first draft and the two revisions) to identify the effects of sentence length. Make notes about what you observe.

Final draft. Write your final draft however you wish, but give particular attention to sentence length. Really look at the differing lengths, and apply what you learned about sentence length during the first two revisions. Always use the sentence length and structure that best serves your piece.

Guidelines

As you revise, notice the choices you make about how to shorten, lengthen, slice, or combine sentences. Notice the effects of each choice, and whether you like each effect.

When you’ve finished revising, consider:

• What challenges did you experience? What was difficult? How did you solve the problems?
• What surprised you? What meaning do you make of your surprise?
• What patterns do you notice in the structures of your short sentences? Of your long sentences?
• What patterns do you notice in the types, lengths, and arrangement of phrases and clauses in your long sentences?
• In your final version, what similarities and variations do you notice in sentence lengths and structures? What patterns do you see in the arrangement of short and long sentences?
• Read each version aloud. What makes a sentence easier or harder to read?
• How did focusing on sentence length affect other elements of your writing?

Also, as you revise, keep in mind narrative flow.

Examples

First, a randomly selected long sentence from a randomly selected page of Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror:

On reaching the palace, Marcel mounted with part of his company to the Dauphin’s chamber, where, while he made a show of protecting the prince, his men fell upon the Dauphin’s two Marshals and slew them before his eyes. [39 words]

Here is my favorite opening line ever, from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany:

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice–not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. [54 words]

Finally one from Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I just started reading. Prior to this sentence, Clare has bumped into Henry in the library. She’s met him many times, but he’s never met her. (It’s a time-travel thing, yo.)  Clare asks Henry out to dinner. Then comes this:

We plan to meet tonight at a nearby Thai restaurant, all the while under the amused gaze of the women behind the desk, and I leave, forgetting about Kelmscott and Chaucer and floating down the marble stairs, through the lobby and out into the October Chicago sun, running across the park scattering small dogs and squirrels, whooping and rejoicing. [59 words]

Invitation

Melinda and I would love to know how you use this exercise and what you learn from it.

If you have questions, suggestions, or anything else you’d like to say, please comment.

Introduction

This exercise focuses on narrative flow.

People use the term narrative flow to mean lots of different things. For the purpose of this exercise, we’re focused on a specific meaning: the connections among words, sentences, and paragraphs.

For more information, see the references section, below.

The Exercise

The prompt. Start your piece with this: I stepped out of my front door and walked down to the street. I looked around and saw everything I knew about the world

First draft. Write the first draft in your usual way. Write it as long as you need it to be.

Revise for narrative flow. Revise what you’ve written, focusing on one goal: Improve the narrative flow, the connections among words, sentences, and paragraphs. Rewrite sentences, restructure them, rearrange them so that each follows naturally from the one before and each leads naturally to the next. Add, remove, or change words. Reorganize paragraphs. And don’t limit yourself to these suggestions. Change anything you can think of to improve the narrative flow.

Maximum word count. 500 words.

Guidelines

Give yourself plenty of time for this exercise. Our writer’s group found it more challenging than we had expected, some requiring five or more hours of work, and as many as eight drafts. Each of the writers who did the exercise found the rewards to be worth the effort.

As you revise, notice the choices you make, and how each choice affects narrative flow. Notice what enhances narrative flow and what interferes. Make notes about what you notice.

When you’ve finished revising, consider:

• What challenges did you experience? What was difficult? How did you solve the problems?
• What surprised you? What meaning do you make of your surprise?
• What kinds of connections did you use in your writing? What kinds of connections can you identify in others’ writing? What effects do these connections create?
• How did focusing on narrative flow affect other elements of your writing?

Discuss what you’ve learned with other people who have completed the exercise. Use these guidelines to guide the conversation.

References

Elisabeth George describes narrative flow in her marvelous book Write Away. The relevant section, available online via Google books, runs from bottom of page 159 through the middle of page 162. Particularly instructive is the excerpt from one of George’s novels, and her analysis of the connections from one paragraph to the next.

In “Creating Narrative Flow,” Sam Reeves describes one way to achieve narrative flow:

One sentence introduces part of a picture that baits the reader into subconsciously asking a question about the idea or action.  The writer, in turn, answers that question in the next sentence while simultaneously expanding information that prompts the reader into asking additional questions. And then the process repeats itself.

Reeves also shows a nice example of how he used this technique to improve the narrative flow of a bumpy paragraph.

Invitation

Melinda and I would love to know how you use this exercise and what you learn from it.

If you have questions, suggestions, or anything else you’d like to say, please comment.

So I tried something I hadn’t tried before: I interviewed my characters.

Well, that turned out to be more interesting than I’d anticipated. And it boosted my word count to boot. And on top of that, it offered some plot ideas.

I didn’t use any pre-planned questionnaire. There are zillions of character questionnaires on the web, and none of them ever seemed to get at the heart of the character.

Instead, I did what I do in many real-life interviews: Follow the energy. The idea is to:

1. Ask a question that invites the character to tell me something new
2. Listen for emotional intensity in the answer. Sometimes the emotion is subtle, and other times it’s big and obvious.
3. Ask my next question based on that emotion.

Rather than describing this process in detail, I’ll let you read the interviews as I conducted them, unedited. I offer these interviews not necessarily as exemplary, but merely as examples. The thing to notice is how I followed the characters’ energy.

Some background: The novel involves a time loop. Every 29 hours, the characters (and everyone else in the story world) loop back in time. The story follows two main plots.

In the first plot, Dan Roberge murders his wife Faith and her lover Zorem. Then time loops and he murders them again. And again. Police detectives Ray Andollo and Patty Yonce investigate.

The interviews:

• Dan Roberge
• Faith Roberge
• Zorem Bigotte
• Detective Ray Andollo
• Detective Patty Yonce

In the second plot, Amy Anderson saves her son from drowning in a pond on the family farm. Then time loops and her son drowns. Then time loops again. After the first incident (before the first time loop), Amy’s husband Frank becomes engraged when he discovers that Amy had been drinking while their sons played at the pond.

The interviews:

• Amy Anderson. This was my favorite interview, because it so significantly affected my understanding of the character.
• Frank Anderson

Mostly the thing is just goofy fun. I’ve spent several hours gibberizing The Gettysburg Address into nearly-meaningful nonsense that sounds like Honest Abe on smack.  If that ain’t fun, I don’t know what is!

But there’s a potentially useful application for Gibberizer.  Fantasy and Science Fiction writers working in invented worlds and cultures can use it to invent names for people, places, and things.  Given a list of names from a culture, Gibberizer will invent other names that seem, more or less, to come from the same culture.

For example, I entered a list of 50 names from Lord of the Rings into Gibberizer, and it created these 25 “similar” names: Fimbreth Nimrodo Maggins Galad Peregolas Fladriel Nimroden Theodel Bregrin Elladriel Elladrif Fladan Elberegalad Pereth Halbaramir Boromiel Farad Beregalad Baggot Froden Beregrin Bregolas Bregond Brandalf Bereth.  Most of those names fit the Lord of the Rings culture.

I’m making Gibberizer available for free for any use whatsoever.

You can download Gibberizer at The Gibberizer Project Page.

System Requirements:  I’ve used Gibberizer only on my Windows computer.  As far as I know, this will also work on any Mac or Linux computer, as the computer has a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 or later.  My understanding is that OS X comes with JRE 5.0 pre-installed.  If your computer doesn’t already have a JRE installed, you can get the latest JRE from Sun Microsystems.  If you try Gibberizer on Linux or a Mac, let me know how it goes. To run Gibberizer, just download the file and double-click it.

The sketchy documentation includes:

• A sketchy Gibberizer User Guide.
• Some ways to play with Gibberizer.
• A Gibberizer Wiki with lots of half-written pages.

One of my goals for the retreat was to practice developing ideas into story ideas, and then into stories.  And I had a technique in mind that I wanted to practice: clustering.

I’d learned about clustering years ago from a writing teacher in New Hampshire, who had learned it from Gabriele Rico’s book Writing the Natural Way.  Dustin Wax describes the technique nicely on his blog, and you can see a Flash animation of clustering in action at the top of Rico’s web site.

I’d used clustering dozens of times for my non-fiction writing (and also for general problem-solving), so I knew it was a great technique for tapping the creative, associative workings of your mind.  But I hadn’t yet used clustering to develop story ideas for fiction, and this was a great opportunity.

So that’s how I would develop ideas into story ideas.  Where would I find the raw, undeveloped ideas to cluster about?  From my brand new copy of The Writer’s Book of Matches, a small book filled with hundreds of intriguing writing prompts.

So I had plan:

1. Pick a random prompt from The Writer’s Book of Matches.
2. Cluster around the core idea of the prompt until a story idea hit me.
3. Write down the story idea.
4. Write the story.

Then I went to work.

My first prompt was:

“He’s probably just as disappointed in me as I am in him.”

The core of this idea is mutual disappointment.  But who are the people involved, and what are they disappointed about?  This is a great job for clustering.  I grabbed my pen and an 8”x5” index card and drew this cluster (rendered here using MindJet’s MindManager software):

Cluster for “Dinner at Gourlay’s” (click for full size) As I dumped associations onto the card, I quickly found a story idea (in the branches I’ve bolded on the map):

A father has long expressed disappointment in his son’s sexual promiscuity.  Then the son catches the father having an affair.

“It’s supposed to be a game, but he treats it like life and death.”

Cluster for “Double or Nothing” (click for full size)

This time the story didn’t jump out at me instantly.  It took a whole five minutes to find an idea that interested me.  The “bet too much” bubble caught my attention because it connected game with death.  Digging yourself too deeply into debt with your bookie (so the stereotype goes) can put you at serious bodily risk.  So imagine a guy deeply in debt and being threatened by his bookie.  What might the guy do?  Maybe he’d kill the bookie, or try to.  Then I thought of a twist:  What if the guy bets a second bookie that he can kill the one to whom he’s in debt?  After a few more twists, I had enough of an idea to start writing:

Norm is deeply in debt to his bookie Paulo.  He tries to hire Emile, a competing bookie, to kill Paulo.  But Emile doesn’t like the idea.  Instead, he offers a deal:  If Norm can kill the Paulo in a week, Emile will pay off the debt.  If Norm can’t kill Paulo in a week, Emile will still pay off the debt, but then Norm will owe Emile twice the amount he owed Paulo.  Double or nothing.

That prompt led to this story idea?  Cool!

I wrote the first scene, which I quite like.  But at the moment I don’t know where the story goes next.  I like the idea that the Emile tips off Paulo that Norm is coming to kill him, but so far I can’t figure out Emile’s motivation to do that.  But it would be fun, so I’ll keep looking.

Time for more clustering.

For the past 25 years I’ve read very little short fiction. Lately I’ve been writing some short fiction myself, and have become interested in learning what makes excellent short stories excellent. I began picking up the odd copy of F&SF and other speculative fiction magazines to study as well as to enjoy. This promotion seemed right up my alley.

I ordered my copy on Thursday, received it on Saturday, and read the final story tonight.

Here are the stories and my reactions (no spoilers here).

“Reader’s Guide” by Lisa Goldstein. I was surprisingly touched by this lovely story about one of the more mysterious aspects of the art of writing fiction. I can’t say anything about the plot without giving away the beauty of the story, but the story is written in the form of a reader’s guide.

“Fullbrim’s Finding” by Matthew Hughes. A “discriminator” goes in search of a client’s lost husband, who has himself gone in search of the meaning of life. (From this story alone, I get the sense that a discriminator is something like a galactic private investigator. F&SF’s intro to the story suggests that the main character has appeared in other short stories and novels, and I suspect that “discriminator” is clarified in those).

“The Roberts” by Michael Blumlein. Technology helps a man solve the problem of finding a “perfect” mate. But what if the imperfections are not in the mate?

“Enfant Terrible” by Scot Dalrymple. A story of a man doing a job that is both necessary for the protection of society, and dirty enough that it’s best kept quiet. Dalrymple tells this story second-person point of view–i.e. the main character is “you”.

“Poison Victory” by Albert E. Chowdrey. In late 1949, a German chemist struggles to atone for his role in bringing Germany to victory in WWII.

“The Dinosaur Train” by James L. Cambias. A setback in a family business–a sort of circus with live dinosaurs–brings three generations of unresolved conflicts to the moment of truth.

My strongest reactions were to the two more experimental stories. I liked “Enfant Terrible” least, specifically because of the second-person point of view. Second-person always makes me fear that the perspective was chosen more for the author’s amusement than for its ability to illuminate the story. In this case I stumbled over the POV, and it didn’t offer any compensations that I could see. I liked the story, but I liked it less for the POV.

The story I liked most was “Reader’s Guide.” I enjoyed my initial puzzle of “how the heck do you tell a story in the form of a reader’s guide?” As it turns out, there’s something about the experimental form that seems necessary to the story. The story itself arises partly from the form, and without that form would not be as effective. That’s an experiment that works.

When I pick up an issue of a fiction magazine I expect to enjoy one or two of the stories. I enjoyed all six of these stories.

Each type of scene has a typical structure. For an action scene, the structure is:

1. Goal: The POV character has an immediate goal (called the scene goal), and acts toward the goal.
2. Conflict: The character hits an obstacle, usually in the form of an opponent, another character whose goals conflict with the POV character’s. For the bulk of the scene, the POV character and the opponent struggle with each other, each to attain their goal.
3. Disaster: The POV character either succeeds or fails to achieve the goal. Most action scenes end not only in failure, but in disaster: The character is worse off at the end of the scene than at the beginning.

The structure for a reaction scene:

1. Reaction: The POV character reels from the preceding disaster. This may include an emotional reaction, an rational reaction, or both. Usually the emotional reaction comes first.
2. Dilemma: The character calms down enough (perhaps just barely enough) to explore options for what to do next. All of the options are bad.
3. Decision: The character chooses the least bad option and commits to it. This becomes the scene goal for the next action scene.

Beats. The middle of each kind of scene proceeds in beats. A beat is a tiny cycle of flow and ebb, of forward and back, of progress and setback.

The conflict in an action scene proceeds in conflict beats. You can think of a conflict beat as starting with either the POV character’s action or with the opponent’s (or environment’s) action. Here’s the POV-character-first version, which I think of as an Action-Result beat:

1. Action: The POV character takes action toward the goal.
2. Result: The opponent acts against the POV character.

And the environment- or opponent-first version, which I think of as a Stimulus-Response beat:

1. Stimulus: Something happens to which the POV character must respond.
2. Response: The character acts in response to the stimulus.

Each kind of conflict beat gives a different perspective on the events of the scene. With Action-Result beats, the POV character appears to drive the sequence of events. With Stimulus-Response beats, the opponent or environment seem to be driving. Neither perspective tells the whole story: The POV character and the opponent co-create the sequence of events. I find it helpful to explore a sequence of beats from each perspective.

In a reaction scene, the dilemma proceeds in dilemma beats:

1. Forward: The character thinks of another possible action toward the goal.
2. Back: The character realizes the disadvantages of that action.

A caveat. These scene and beat structures are templates. If you apply the templates too rigidly, your story will read as if, uh… as if you wrote it by rigidly applying templates. I reach for templates like these only when I don’t know what to write next. They’re a great way to jiggle my brain. If the words are flowing without the templates, I don’t think about these structures.

Further reading. I learned these most of these ideas from Dwight Swain and two other writers who have expanded on Swain’s work:

• Techniques of the $elling Writer by Dwight V. Swain.
• Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham.
• Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction Writing web site–in particular his article on ”Writing the Perfect Scene”. Randy also has a helpful blog.

Other names for these ideas. Swain uses different names than I do for these ideas, and Bickham and Ingermanson follow Swain’s lead:

• What I call an action scene, Swain calls a Scene (capital S).
• What I call a reaction scene, Swain calls a Sequel.
• What I call a Stimulus-Response beat, Swain calls a Motivation-Reaction Unit (MRU).

As far as I know, “dilemma beat” is my own idea, though it’s probably implied by Swain’s description of Sequels.

Also, other people use the term beat in other ways.

In Episode One, the writers describe some of the techniques and tools they use to create and organize ideas.

Writing Excuses is available on iTunes.

1. Write down any character, location, object, situation, action, theme, or other story element.  It may be fascinating or mundane.  It may be one you’ve thought about and written about extensively, or one that just popped into your head.
2. Write down every variable you can think of for the story element.  By variable, I mean anything that you could vary.  Ask yourself:  What could I vary about this?  What else could I vary?  When you run out of ideas, ask yourself:  If I could think of one more thing, what would it be?
3. For each variable, write down every value you can think of.
4. Pick a few variables that seem interesting to you.  Try different combinations of values for those variables.  What story ideas does this give you?

Let’s try a mundane action:  Sharpening a pencil.

What could you vary about sharpening a pencil?  Here are some of the variables I can think of:

• The kind of sharpener.
• The sharpener’s condition, age, mechanical soundness, rustiness, sharpness, squeakiness, color, shape…
• The location of the sharpener.  It’s orientation.  The soundness of its mounting…
• The state of mind of the person sharpening it.
• The person’s dexterity, eyesight, hand strength, height, olfactory acuity…
• The pencil’s age, color, length, composition, dryness, wetness…
• The brand of pencil.
• The brand of sharpener.
• The person’s reason for sharpening it… intentions for the pencil…
• How easy it was to find the sharpener, or to travel to it.
• The climate, weather, temperature, humidity, noise level around the person and the sharpener.
• … and so on …

Now let’s pick a few variables and identify lots of values.

What kind of sharpener is it?

• Electric.
• Mechanical crank style.
• A small, plastic, hand-held one with an angled razor blade edge.
• A pocket knife.
• … What other kinds? …

What is the person’s reason for sharpening the pencil?

• To write something.  (To write what?  A novel?  A Dear John letter?  A contract?  A manifesto?  This gives a new variable to play with, which may lead to yet further variables.)
• To mark a board for cutting.  (To build what?)
• Well, duh!  Pencils are supposed to be sharp!  (Where did this rule come from?  What other, related rules might the person have?)
• To poke a hole in something (what?).
• To stab someone (who?) or something (what?).  (Why?)
• Because the aroma of freshly shaved wood and graphite reminds the person of a simpler time, when the world (and he) was more innocent.
• … What other reasons? …

What is the condition of the person sharpening the pencil?

• Too young to manipulate the pencil or the sharpener well.  Or too old.
• Shaky hands.  (Why?)
• Drunk.
• Angry (about what?).  Jealous (of whom?).
• Hemophiliac.
• Wearing gloves (what kind of gloves?).
• … What other possibilities? …

What combinations of values seem interesting?  Using the pencil as a weapon seems obvious, so I’ll try something else.

An elderly, arthritic man twists a yellow, Berol Ben Franklin No. 2 pencil in a small, forest green razor-type sharpener.  He doesn’t need the pencil to be sharp (he has nine sharp pencils in a Texaco cup on his roll-top writing desk).  And he can’t see well enough to write, anyway.  But the smell of the wood and paint and resin and graphite takes him back to his childhood, transports him away from the terrible reality of the deed he had done – not impulsively, not in haste, but after careful, prolonged consideration – just two hours earlier…

Your Turn.  Try the exercise yourself.  Let me know what happens.

What if everyone started living the same day over and over again, but, unlike most situations, everyone knew about it?

I’ve adapted this marvelous idea slightly:

On August 10, 2008 at 2:39 am GMT, the universe reverts to the state it was in on August 8 at 9:28 pm GMT. Then on August 10, it happens again. And again. The universe is stuck in time loop that lasts 29 hours 11 minutes. Only one thing transcends the resets: consciousness. People retain their memories through the time loops.

That’s nearly all I have to start with. I currently have no plot and no characters. I do have a scene or two in mind to get my fingers moving. And I’m starting to flesh out some of the social, political, scientific, and religious implications of the time loop. All of that speculation has yet to yield a single plot idea, but this is NaNoWriMo, so it’s okay if I have no idea what happens next.

Read out loud this passage from Scott Smith’s The Ruins:

Amy kept whispering the same thing. “It’s time.” Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning.

Did you emphasize any of the words, even slightly?

In the audio version of the book, Patrick Wilson, the reader, emphasized the word grasp. “Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning.” Clearly this is the wrong emphasis. Better emphasis would be, “Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then their meaning.”

What makes Wilson stumble? My guess is this: The sentence promises a parallel structure, and then fails to deliver.

The word first announces a sequence: First X, then Y. Readers expect the two parts of the sequence—the X and the Y—to have a parallel grammatical structure. For the structure to be parallel, the two items, whether words or phrases, must fulfill the same grammatical function. If one is a verb phrase, the other will be a verb phrase. If one is a noun phrase, the other will be a noun phrase.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty test for whether a structure is parallel:  Extract the X and Y from the sentence and put them in a list. Then ask yourself whether the items have the same grammatical function.

The X and Y from Smith’s sentence are:

• to grasp the words
• their meaning

Do these phrases have the same grammatical function? No. To grasp the words is a verb phrase. Their meaning is a noun phrase. The structure is not parallel.

If you aren’t sure of the grammatical functions of the items, try this. Create a new sentence by swapping the X and the Y and read again. The new sentence may not make sense semantically (after all, we’ve swapped the order of the sequence), but if it works grammatically, the structure is parallel. If the new sentence doesn’t flow grammatically, the structure is not parallel.

Let’s swap Smith’s X and Y: Stacy struggled first their meaning, then to grasp the words. That doesn’t flow grammatically, so the original structure was not parallel.

How could we fix this? One way is to add parts to the smaller phrase until it matches the structure of the longer phrase: Stacy struggled first to grasp the words, then to grasp their meaning. Now the phrases are both verb phrases, and the structure is parallel.

But there’s another piece to the puzzle of how Wilson stumbled. First is one of those words that invites us to emphasize the next meaningful word. The next meaningful word in Smith’s sentence is grasp, so we emphasize that. Even in our revised sentence, grasp is the wrong word to emphasize.

Another way to repair the sentence is to move parts out of the larger phrase, until it matches the structure of the shorter phrase: Stacy struggled to grasp first the words, then their meaning. This seems overly formal to me, but the structure is parallel, and first invites us to place the emphasis in the right place: first words, then meaning.

But if you check what most writers who don’t outline have to say about their work habits, you will discover that they end up doing several drafts of a book and any number of rewrites afterwards.I don’t. I do one draft, one rewrite, and I’m done.

… By outlining, you are doing the hard work in the beginning–the thinking, the organizing, the weighing and considering, and the making of choices. By doing it early, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort at the end. [Sometimes the Magic Works, p 95]

I don’t think Brooks’s advice fits for me.

I wrote my first novel in November as a NaNoWriMo project. In the month before, in October, I prepared by writing a partial outline. I sketched out 20 or so scenes. Most of these were action scenes, in which a viewpoint character tries to accomplish some goal, bumps into a conflict or obstacle, and (usually) ends up worse off at the end of the scene. For those scenes, I noted the goal, the conflict, and the outcome.

A handful of scenes were reaction scenes, in which the viewpoint character reacts to a setback, ponders the available options (usually all bad), and makes a decision about what to do next. For each reaction scene I noted the reactions, the options, and the decision.

Those 20 scenes seemed like a great beginning for the novel–they left the main character on the edge of his sanity. But I didn’t know what would happen next. I put in a lot of thought, but couldn’t think of anything that satisfied me. I had a vague idea or two about the ending, but I didn’t know what would happen in the middle of the story. I ended October with a detailed outline for the beginning, an idea or two about the ending, and no clue about the middle.

On November 1st I began writing the scenes I had sketched in the outline. On most days the words flowed well. Other days the words came slowly. But they always came.

Somewhere around the 14th, I ran out of outline. But I kept writing, and the ideas kept coming. On most days the words flowed well. Other days the words came slowly. But they always came.

By the end of November, I had written about 18,000 words according to the outline, and another 34,000 words without an outline. Mostly my process stayed the same, outline or not. And the quality of my writing stayed the same. And my hopes and worries about my writing stayed the same.

So it isn’t clear to me that the outline helped, or that it saved me any time.

My first draft, at 52,000 words, is just barely a novel. It’s certainly not a good novel. It is sketchy. It’s full of holes. The characters do a few things with little motivation. In a few places, I made characters do downright stupid things in service to the ending I had cooked up ahead of time. I have a lot of work to do to flesh out the story and make it satisfying. In a sense, my first draft is not much more than a detailed outline.

It’s possible that this first draft gave me no better understanding of the plot–the main events of the story–than I would have gotten from completing the outline. Even if that’s true, I’d still prefer the writing, for two reasons. First, as much as I enjoyed outlining, I enjoyed the writing far more. That counts for a lot.

Even more important is this: As I was outlining–thinking about the story–I had a general sense of who the main characters were. But I didn’t have an experience of the characters no matter how much I thought about them. It was only by writing them into trouble, and writing their reactions to the trouble, that I could decide who I wanted them to be.

As I outlined, I thought about the plot and the characters. As I wrote, I experienced the the characters. Experiencing was better than thinking, in the same way that eating a strawberry is better than thinking about eating a strawberry.

That’s the premise behind Jeremy Comes Home, my first National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in November.

I start writing tonight at midnight, along with a mixed metaphor of other enthusiastic NaNoers at a cafe in Dixon, CA.

I got the germ for this novel while sitting in a theater in Berkeley on October 2. Some writer friends and I were listening to Neil Gaiman read some of his short stories from Fragile Things. One of the stories, “October in the Chair,” was partly about a boy who had run away from home. As I listened, I had the thought, what if he went home and his mother didn’t know who he was? And a plot was born.

[Update November 1] You can track my progress on the NaNoWriMo progress sheet. Yes, my user ID on the NaNoWriMo web site is Bleen Booley.

I drew mind maps for two big topics: how relationships affect resistance, and how context or environmental factors affect resistance. The mind maps give me plenty to write about—probably several days worth of writing for each topic.

I didn’t expect to write last night. I expected to rest for a class I’m teaching with Elisabeth Hendrickson. But at 10pm I got the itch to write. I ended up writing 2200 words in an hour and a half, and got too little sleep. I’m taking tonight off to get some well-earned rest.

New word processor. I’ve switched to a new word processor called Rough Draft, which my writer friend Jennifer recommended. The thing I like most about Rough Draft is its simplicity. For what I’m doing, I don’t need styles, tables, diagrams, or change tracking. I may want those features later as I edit my rough draft into a smoother draft. For now, I need to type words, emphasize words, highlight words (to mark them as notes to myself), and count words. Rough Draft does all of that simply and cleanly, with few bells and whistles.

Rough Draft does have one distinguishing feature (either a whistle or a bell, I’m not sure which) that I’ve quickly come to rely on. For each file that you open, Rough Draft attaches a notepad, a simple text file in which you can type notes. Rough Draft displays the notepad as a narrow panel to the right of the main editing window. I’m finding this very handy, because it supports the spiral method that is central to the way I write. As I write about a topic, I think of other ideas that I want to write about, or questions that I want to answer, before I close the topic. I simply click on the notepad, jot a note, and go back to what I was writing. As I finish writing a thought, I check the notepad, grab an idea to write next, write it, and delete the note from the notepad. When the notepad is empty, I’m done writing that section. The notepad works as a high-priority list of micro-ideas. Very, very nice.

Version control and backups. Something I forgot to mention last week, probably because I was focusing on what was new in my writing process, is that I use a version control system to protect my files. I’m partial to the Tortoise SVN system, because it integrates nicely with the Windows file system. When I finish a writing session, I right click in my writing folder and commit my new material to a repository for safekeeping. Though Tortoise SVN takes a little bit of technical savvy, I highly recommend it for writers.

For greater protection I use EMC’s Retrospect, which automatically backs up my files to a separate hard drive every day at 5am.

Depleting the high energy queue. Several times this week I depleted high energy queue. It’s pretty slim right now. Scary. But so far I’ve been able to find something to write about every day.

Bigger topics. I never know how many words I’m going to write about each topic. Most end up in the 300–800 word range, similar to my blog posts. This week I found a few topics about which I had more to say. A few topics went to several thousand words each. I love when that happens.

One of those topics was definitions of resistance. Another was, more or less, why we don’t do the things we “know” we ought to do. Lots of people have asked me about that over the years, and when I finally started writing about it, I got four or five thousand words from the topic. And I’m not done yet. The scare quotes around “know” are a clue to my ideas on the topic.

Obsessed with word count. I long ago developed the habit of typing CTRL-S into whatever editor or word processor I’m using. I want to make sure my words are saved onto my hard drive. Every time I pause in my writing, I type CTRL-S without thinking about it. (Like just then.) I’ve now developed another habit for this book: Typing CTRL-W to display my word count. I’m obsessed with my word count.

When my word count for the day reaches about 1100, my energy really picks up. It feels as if I’m in the home stretch, and I can see the finish line just ahead. Very motivating. And most of the time my energy carries me a few hundred words past my daily goal. Which brings me to another topic…

Building a buffer. As I exceed my word goal each day, I start to build a buffer of “excess” words, so that if I miss a daily goal I’m still on target for the month. My buffer at the moment is about 2600 words, about a day and two thirds worth of writing. I’m hoping to increase the buffer to 3 days, because I’ll be teaching a class with Elisabeth Hendrickson next week and may not write much during those three days. (On the other hand, the class will probably give me a lot of fodder for the book, so I may write more instead of less.)

The Fieldstone Method. As I was writing about energy last week it didn’t occur to me (duh!) that I am using Jerry Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method to write this book. The central element of the Fieldstone Method is energy. As Jerry says in Weinberg on Writing, “That’s the secret of the Fieldstone Method: Always be guided by emotional responses or, as Fieldstone writers say, by the energy.” I’ve attended three of Jerry’s writing workshops, and each time come away with new ideas and new enthusiasm for my writing. The Fieldstone Method is all about energy, and that’s how I’ve been focusing my work each day.

Johanna Rothman blogged about her current writing project. She’s writing a chapter at a time, and as she finishes drafting each chapter she sends it to her editor for review. It occurred to me that I’m not writing chapters yet. I don’t know the structure of my book. Instead, I’m writing “fieldstones.” Each fieldstone is single idea for which I have some energy. Later I’ll use some of organizing ideas from Jerry’s Fieldstone Method to create (or find) a structure for the book, and revise the fieldstones to work within that structure. But for now my focus is: One fieldstone at a time.

Waiting for the muse. Nearly every day I use an old, familiar pattern of mine: I wait for the muse to inspire me before I sit down to write. And nearly every day I find that my muse doesn’t work that way. Instead, as Madeline L’Engle says, “Inspiration usually comes during the work, rather than before it.”

Multiple projects. I’m planning to write a novel next month as part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This week I’ve started to flesh out the characters and plot for the novel. That gives me something to do when I want to write but don’t have the energy for the resistance book. I find that after a half-hour or so of work on the novel I am fully into a writing mood and can use some of that energy for the resistance book.

Also, I’m finishing up the design for a workshop on power, which I’ll be presenting at the AYE Conference in a few weeks. It’s just dawned on me that if I’m stuck on the resistance book I can write a few fieldstones about power (maybe for another book for later). As with plotting the novel, writing about power will put me into a writing mood, which I can then redirect toward the resistance book. And of course power and resistance are closely related, so writing about power will trigger new ideas about resistance.

The most surprising thing I’m learning is that my only real writing challenge is managing my energy. As I decide what to write next, if I pick an idea that I have a lot of energy for, I can quickly write 500 or 1000 words. If I pick a low energy idea, I slowly write 80 words, then discover that the towels in the linen closet desperately need to be rearranged. Unfortunately, rearranging the towels doesn’t add to my word count, so I’ve been working on ways to keep my energy up.

Two factors seem to drive my energy: Keeping a short list of high energy topics, and receiving support from my friends.

Since 1993 I’ve been keeping notes about any topics that interest me. I’ve jotted notes on index cards, note pads, scraps of paper, and paper tablecloths from restaurants. Nowadays I use a small Moleskine notebook that I carry everywhere I go. I highlight the books I read. In the car I take notes and even “highlight” audiobooks using an Olympus DM-10 digital recorder. And I have two dozen hour-long microcassettes full of notes that I recorded before I bought the DM-10. I’ve transcribed most of those recorded notes into text files on my computer.

Naturally, these notes have been invaluable as I draft my book. When I’m stuck on a topic, I open X1, type a few keywords, and scan the notes I’ve made about the topic. It’s likely that I’ve already thought about it (repeatedly), and made notes of my thoughts.

To track my ideas for the book, I’m using EverNote, a wonderful, simple program for writing, storing, categorizing, and searching notes. As I think of ideas, and as I gather notes from my files, I copy each into EverNote and categorize it according to the topics that the note is about.

I also tag each note with a status, such as To Do or Drafted. For the first few days of DaNoFiWriMo, whenever I finished writing about a topic I would scan my To Do notes for another. As my EverNote file grew—it now has 194 distinct ideas to write about—I had a harder time choosing the next topic. I found myself reading and re-reading topics that I didn’t have the energy for right now.

That gave me an idea. I added a new tag called High Energy. Whenever I make a note that I have High Energy for, I tag it. Then when I’m looking for the next topic to write, I look first at the High Energy topics. One of them usually grabs my attention, and I dive in and write about it.

Sometimes as I’m adding a note to a particular topic, the new note combines with existing ones so that the topic reaches critical mass and I suddenly have more energy for it. When that happens, I tag some of that topic’s old notes as High Energy.

One of the keys to energy seems to be keeping my High Energy list short. The list now has 18 items, which is a little larger than I can scan quickly. I may have to drop some items and keep the list to a dozen items or so.

My energy for each topic comes and goes. Just because I marked a topic as High Energy yesterday, or this morning, or twenty minutes ago, that doesn’t mean I’ll have energy for it now. Sometimes I scan through my High Energy topics and don’t feel like writing about any of them. Now what do I write about?

I created a “Jiggler File” to help with that The Jiggler File is a file of ideas for remembering or creating ideas. Whenever my I can’t find anything I want to write about in my EverNote file, I open up my Jiggler File and give myself a jiggle.

Here’s my current Jiggler File:

• 60000 words about resistance. (This is a file I started in 1997 with a goal to write 60,000 words about resistance. I wrote about 15,000 words before fizzling out.)
• Quick takes on resistance. (A list of about 70 principles I’ve learned or invented for responding to resistance.)
• Recorded notes. (Notes I’ve taken on every topic under the sun, and on every writing medium under the sun, since 1993.)
• Highlighted passages. (Passages that I highlighted as I read books.)
• Flip book. (My “flip book” is a spiral-bound book of index cards, and on each card I’ve described a model of some aspect of being human and relating to other people. If I’m stuck for ideas on a given topic—resistance, for example—I can open my flip book to any page, and ask “How does this relate to resistance?” This always gives me fresh ideas.)
• Mind map. (Fire up MindManager and spew a mind map of whatever connections pop into my head.)
• Reasons to; reasons not to; examples of resistance. (A list of examples of resistance, and lists of reasons people have given for doing or not doing something that someone else has requested. I’ve collected hundreds of each during my resistance presentations and workshops over the past 10 years.)
• Presentations. (PowerPoint slides from my presentations about resistance.)
• Make up a story. (If I have a principle but can’t remember the story the led to it, make up a story. This will get me writing, and I can find a real story later.)

So far I haven’t used the last three jigglers. And I haven’t exhausted the ideas from the other jigglers. I’m in no danger of running out of things to write about.

One condition I’ve placed on DaNoFiWriMo is not to use ideas I’ve already written about. In addition to writing directly about ”Resistance as a Resource”, I’ve also written popular articles about the closely related topics of communication and change. And I’ve written dozens of blog articles about resistance, communicating, relating, power, and related topics. My choice not to use any of what I’ve written in those articles has been marvelously motivating. It means that when I’m done writing 50,000 words this month, I also have tens of thousands of words of additional material that I can add to the book.

In addition to tagging my notes with topics and status, I also tag it with an indication of… I don’t know what to call this… some sort of rhetorical category. What kind of idea is this? Some ideas are stories. Others are principles. Some are models. Others are definitions, quotations, or procedures.

Somewhere around day 4 I noticed something horrifying. Though the large majority of my notes are principles (110 of my 194 notes), I have very little energy for writing about a principle unless I have a story to go with it. When I remember a story about some aspect of resistance, the words flow easily. And once I’ve written the story, I can describe the principle easily and clearly. But when I start with a principle and try to write about it, I suddenly feel constricted.

The notes I’ve taken over the years are largely notes about principles. When something interesting happens, I tend to summarize it into a principle, and then forget the details of the story. I’ve noticed this when I do classes. People ask me to give examples of the ideas I’m talking about, and often I can’t remember an example. I can see that I’m going to have to change the way I take notes. In addition to writing down the lessons I’m learning from some experience, in the future I will want to write the story of the experience.

Another big lesson (though not a new one for me) is that the support of my friends means a great deal to me. My first sign of support was from a very bright friend who, 12 minutes after I announced DaNoFiWriMo, wrote to tell me that he too would write a book in October, a book he’d been thinking of writing for a long time. He sends me (and other writer friends) daily progress reports, and seeing his progress always gives me a boost of energy. Thank you, as-yet-unnamed author friend!

Second, several people responded to my request for questions about resistance, and several others have talked to me in private about some of their puzzles about resistance. I always have more energy to write when I know that real people care about what Im writing about. Thank you, Richard, Doris, and Elisabeth!

Third, when I complained to a fiction-writing friend that I don’t remember the stories that led to some of the ideas I’m writing about, she said, “Why not make up a story?” Aha! That would get me writing, and I could find a “true” story later. Thank you, Melinda!

Fourth, a number of colleagues I admire, and who have recently published books of their own, wrote to cheer me on. Thank you, Johanna and Dwayne!

And last but not least: That fracking public commitment I made keeps me going when I want to bail out after writing 900 words each day. Thank you, younger Dale!

Perhaps the biggest lesson of DaNoFiWriMo is that I’m learning how to manage my energy, and that in itself is energizing me.

This year I want to do something similar, but with non-fiction. I’m tempted to call it NaNoFiWriMo, or National Non-Fiction Writing Month, but I’m refraining for two reasons. First, at least two other people already thought of that. Second, I don’t care whether this goes national; I’m doing it for myself.

So I’m calling it Dale’s Non-Fiction Writing Month, or DaNoFiWriMo. I’ve chosen October for my first DaNoFiWriMo, because for the first time in years I have a whole month with no scheduled training or consulting.

Part of the NaNoWriMo process is making a public commitment. I hate that. But I hate it less now than I will three days from now, so here goes: I will write a 50,000 word draft of a non-fiction book in October, 2006. I’ll let you guess the topic.

Do we still switch to standard time in October? I could use the extra hour.

[Update October 27, 2006] Daily DaNoFiWriMo Progress Report

Lessons Learned from Week One

Lessons Learned from Week Two

Lessons Learned from Week Three

Nugget: People change in order to remain the same. That is, we will change something less important in order to maintain something that is more important.

Q1. How does changing help stay the same?

Q2. Can you give a few examples?

Q3. How can I keep something stable?

Q4. Is this the only reason to change?

Q5. Is this the only way to stay the same?

A1. To keep something the same, we change less important things that either isolate the important thing from change or absorb the change.

A horse’s gait changes when the pressure on its bones reaches one third of the pressure it can handle. The gait change reduces the pressure.

Q6. What about as the horse slows down? Why change gait then?

Q7. Are isolating and absorbing the only reasons for change?

Q8. Are they the only strategies for stability?

• Stability is a problem only when some force acts to cause a change. We can maintain things indefinitely if no force is acting on them.

Q9. How can I use this principle to reduce resistance?

A2. Examples: Drop three low-priority projects in order to sustain progress on high-priority projects.

Rewrite software to take advantage of new technology in order to maintain responsiveness and growth.

Temporarily stop looking for a job, and instead upgrade skills, in order to maintain marketability.

Lower prices in order to maintain market share.

A8: Another way to maintain stability: Adapt to changes in the environment, so that the environment supports the new configuration — or at least doesn’t threaten it.

Three ways to keep something stable:

• Isolate
• Absorb
• Adapt

• Gain or maintain something we value even more.

A4. I believe that the only reason we change is to maintain something more important.

Q10. What about when I change jobs in order to get a raise? That isn’t about maintaining anything.

A5. The only way to maintain something in the face of a threatening force is to change something less important — something that will isolate the more important thing from teh change, absorb the force and dissipate it, or adapt to the change in the environment.

A8. As far as I can tell, these are the only three ways:

Absorb: Convert the force into less harmful forms or more useful forms.

Apply some energy to revert the environment. This takes energy that you could have used for something else. I see that as a form of adaptation.

Absorb (from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary): Include or take (a thing) in so that it no longer has separate existence; incorporate. Gain energy from and reduce the intensity of.

Adapt (from SOED): Fit, adjust. Alter or modify to fit a new use, new conditions.

Isolate (from SOED): Place or set apart or alone; separate from or unconnected with other things.