Tara K. Harper Character Worksheet

Pamela Dowd Character Worksheet

The Lazy Scholar Character Worksheet

After putting up the post about merging plots to speed up your word count, a blend of two fairy tales crept into my head and kept growing over the next few days. I like it so much I wanted to share it with you.

It's generally a good idea to give your eyes and brain a rest once finished with the first draft of a manuscript. After blocking out the existence of my NaNoWriMo novel for 6 weeks now, this coming weekend is the one I've designated to finally pick it back up again.

Editing, is easy to get lost in. If you don't have a good project management plan, you can loose sight of the forest because of the trees. In order to psych myself up for this behemoth task, I gave myself a little refresher course in the basics of editing...like where in the world I should beginning. I started by listing what I know. These are snippets from things I learned in grade school, a writing class I took a while ago, and first hand in the trenches:

• During the first editing pass, read for content. During the second editing pass, read line by line for style.


• Read the story to yourself out loud (something I like to do during the first editing pass). What looks good on the page may not sound good to your ear. Verbalizing your prose will help you identify any awkward text.


• When editing by hand (this is something I like to do during the second editing pass) print a copy of your work double spaced. That way you'll have room for corrections and notes in between each line


• Something we called ratiocinating in 7th grade. Count up all the occurrences of the following "am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been" and contractions that include these (i.e. I'm, you're, etc.). Then go through your manuscript and reduce these occurrences by half. This will help you avoid passive sentences. Back in school, we were told it will make for a stronger "voice".


• If a scene/action/sentence doesn't in some way lent some value to the story, get rid of it. Superfluous = Bad.


• Try to get rid of excessive occurrences of the word "said" when used to introduce dialogue.

On Friday, with my manuscript and these basic points of editing, I'm going to take a deep cleansing breath and begin the first editing pass.

Editing can be a "black box" of sorts. You don't exactly know what you will need until you get into it. So, how do you like to edit? What tips and tricks do you apply to develop a masterpiece out of the block of marble that is your manuscript?

In real estate, location can do wonders for property value. But can location do the same for your writing? Not where your story takes place, but where you park yourself to do your writing.

This was a phenomenon I began to notice in college and it continued to hold true for my writing during both the '08 and '09 NaNoWriMo. Where I am can make a difference in how productive I am. There are certain places inside my house that are more productive writing locations than others. The three best are 1) At my kitchen table, 2) On my front porch and 3) Sitting on my bed. Note that the living room couch is not on that list. That's where the TV is. If I'm in front of a TV for any significant amount of time, it's inevitable that I will turn that TV on. And of course, if the TV is on, the progress on my word count will grind to a halt. The same holds true with editing. If the TV is on, I'll get uber distracted only rewrite one or two sentences.

I have also discovered that if my work pace is slow, switching locations can do wonders for productivity as well. If the writing locations in my house are being stingy with sharing their creative juju, I'll venture out into the city. One of my many favorite writing locations here in Houston is Empire Cafe. Most importantly they have good coffee. Second, their food is excellent and reasonably priced. And finally the atmosphere in the dining room and on their patio provides an endless stream of inspiration. Thus creating a perfect writing location trifecta! The only down side to this place is the lack of electrical outlets. But if you have good battery life or are working from a hard copy (which I sometimes prefer for editing) access to modern comforts such as plugs are not a necessity. There's also some nostalgia attached to the Empire. Back in high school my friends and I would tell our parents we were going to Barns & Nobel, but instead drive in from the burbs to Empire just for the coffee...yes, the coffee is just that good.

So, at the end of the day, I may have packed up my laptop and notes and towed them with me to multiple different places. But at least I will have (maybe) made some progress.

I've dicided to completly overhaul my plot. After a combination of inspiring works of art in New York and sleeping on it for 17 days now, I'm re-routing the story. All the major characters will be the same, they're just getting rearranged on the game board.

The seeds of change were planted when I was at the museum. Specifically with this painting that was in the 19th and 20th century European Painters wing at the museum in NYC.

The dominating color of this painting was very striking to me and was the first thing that caught my attention. Green is after all one of my favorite hues. But, it was the subject of the paining that planted the seeds of change for my plot. To me impressionism looks like a painted memory. And, this loving mother and father with their child in a setting of the simple life was the perfect childhood memory for my main character to reflect on in the first chapter of my novel.

Getting one litte idea like this always opens up a can of worms. Now I have a completly new road map of the plot in my head. There's almost too much of it to keep straight. Instead of jumping in at the first paragraph and shredding the plot beyond all recognition, I'm going to try to go about this in an organized manner. Before actually touching the manuscript, I've decided to go through the snowflake plot developement method again. Check it out here:

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

Being an engineer, I'm a fan of any method that involves orginazation using a spreadsheet like this one does. Of course this means I have a lot of work ahead of me. I'm basically going to rewrite my novel, minus a few of the key scenes. But I really do like this story line. It's one that has been floating around in my head for a year or two now. Hopefully this revision process won't pound my love for this plot to a pulp. I want this novel to survive.

I'm writing this post on the plane back to Houston. And, I have to say, it was quite the vacation. Overall we spent five days in the city and two in central PA. It was also the best vacation yet, even with the for hour snow delay in H-town. Once in NYC, trying to find free wifi was an adventure. The hotel we stayed at charged $10 a day for internet access, so I passed on that. Then, the first place we tried that advertised free wireless didn't even know the password. When free wifi was finally procured, my battery lasted about as long as a snowball in hell. So, I'm left to post all my vacation shmutz after it's all over.

This was my fourth trip to NYC and I finally made it to the metropolitan Museum of Art. If your planning on going to the city, this is a must see. I was very excited about this visit for two reasons. First, this museum is EPIC. I mean really and truly EPIC. Sure, I know there are museums out there that are epic-er like the Louver or the Hermitage. But, right now traveling to see that level of grandeur is above my tax bracket. Second, when I was in the 5th grade or so, one of the books that we were required to read was "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E. L. Koingsburg. The long and short of the story is a young girl runs away from home with her little brother and holes up in the Met for a while. (If you have kids around the 5th grader age, I highly recommend this read. I enjoyed despite the fact I read it back at an age when one inherently dislikes any required reading. And, I'd read it again today if I could get my hands on a copy. Also, It won the Newbery Award back in 1968.) So, I was very excited about getting to see something 'epic' and a piece of my childhood memories all in one day.

Even if you're not that much of a much of a museum person, there is so much here to see, it's not possible to be disappointed. And, if you're a writer (like me) or an artist, or even someone who enjoys a nice latch-hook rug project every now and then, you are sure to find inspiration within it's walls.

Oh, and I should mention, it's an all day event. We only saw about half of the exhibits and we were there for almost five hours. Here's a little sampling of our day there:

Before you make it into any of the exhibit halls, the museum lobby itself is extremely impressive. The architecture in the lobby alone is massive and jaw dropping. The picture to the left is of the arches that loom over the lobby.

As if wandering through the galleries and seeing some of the most famous works of art wasn't impressive enough, there were entire rooms from Parisian hotels that had been transported and reassembled for display. Unfortunately, this was one of the wings where no photography was allowed. But in the American wing, where the facade of a 19th century Wall St. bank building along with various pieces of NYC landmarks had been put on display was not off limits. The marble floor under the glass roof in this wing was littered with art students and others who fancied themselves artistic sketching all aspects of this exhibit.

The icing on the cake was the Greek and Roman Hall. Here you could go nose to nose in a staring contest with both the Young Hercules and the Bearded Hercules. Or if you preferred a more demure opponent, Aphrodite was there as well. There were almost too many from the ancient pantheon of gods to choose from.

Aside from the museum, there were the obligatory tourist stops we had to make that had not been checked off the list during previous visits. 1. Magnolia Bakery: where, yes the cupcakes were all that was raved about. And 2. Caffe Reggio: the oldest coffee shop in Greenwich Village and the oldest cappuccino in the city. I do admit, it was the most fabulous caffeinated beverage I've ever downed. But, I must warn you that it's a block from NYU and there were a plethora of pretentious collegiates regurgitating what had been spoon fed to them in their last lecture. So, if you decided to check this out should you ever find yourself in New York, caffeinate at your own risk.

Yes, I know, that was a rather short list. But, to be completely honest, most of our time was spent eating, or looking for the place we would have our next meal. If you are a foodie this is unequivocally the town for you. I had the best steak of my life and the downtown local of Les Halles (Anthony Bourdain's restaurant). I had a truly proper creme brule at a place call Thalia. It was wonderful, not some knock-off flan like piece that so many chains try to pass off as dessert. And to top it all off, our last meal in the city was at Cafeteria with (and I swear I'm not exaggerating here) the absolute best mac 'n' cheese on the planet.

Now, after stuffing myself silly for a week with both food and eye candy, it's back to the grind in Houston and...editing.

Next up: A post on re-routing my NaNoWriMo plot and the muse that inspired it. It should be up late tomorrow so check back soon!

I decided to take a bit of a mental break before I jump into my editing plan. I had been really fired up and ready to go. However, there were some speed bumps this weekend that really took a chunk out of my momentum.

First was the nearly 8 hours it took to get from Houston to New York this past Friday. Normally it's a flight that's just a little less than three hours. But, it was snowing in Houston. Yes, you read that right. SNOWING. (See the photographic proof taken in downtown on the way to the air port.) It snowed for quite a few hours and as a result, our plane had to be deiced. To make a long story short, we got to de-board the plane for an hour, only to have to wait for another three hours on the plane sitting on the tarmac to be deiced before we finally took off about 4 and a half hours after our scheduled departure time. Since I got to my hotel well after 10 p.m., I deemed it a lost writing day and instead went down to the hotel and had a drink at the bar.

After that very frustrating day lost almost completely to travel, I decided I needed another day off. (Are you seeing a trend starting to develop here?...Procrastination!) There was a trip to Little Italy for lunch where we ate ourselves stupid on the best Gnocchi, Fettuccine Alfredo and Cannoli ever (no writing). Afterward was an almost painful trip through Chinatown for some of the finest knockoff items in the country (no writing done here either). Usually I enjoy haggling in Chinatown, but the sky was heavily dumping a slushy rain/snow mix and it was very, very, very crowded. I was completely occupied with trying to not get my eyes poked out from a stray umbrella tip instead of being able to enjoy looking at the items in the vendor stalls. After fighting our way through the deadly sea of parapluies to the subway station and back to the hotel, we made plans for dinner. At dinner we ate ourselves even more stupid than we did at lunch and finished it all of with a creme brule trio (nothing that could have even been mistaken for writing at night either). All the while it continued to snow, and snow, and snow even more.

Unfortunately, none of the snow stuck in the city. But, on the way from the city into central PA, the hills and the trees were still covered with the fresh dusting of snow from the night before. (See the above picture, taken somewhere along I-78 in New Jersey) A warm, well heated car was the perfect way to enjoy the winter scenery. I'm very much a tropical person. And while I love the look of snow, I'm not a fan of the cold.

Over the past three days I've gotten bupkus done in the way of editing. However, one thing I noticed during this time is that I haven't had any coffee. I believe that this is scientific proof for why I have not been productive in my editing endeavors. So tomorrow morning, I'm going to begin my daily caffeine regimen again and hopefully make some progress.

Now that NaNoWriMo is over and I crossed the 50k barrier, I'm ready to start the editing process. However, I feel a bit like Wiley Coyote after he just ran off the cliff. I'm hanging out there unsupported, holding up a sign that reads "Help!", only moments before plummeting in to the great abyss.

The problem is, I've got this lump of 50,024 words with plot conflicts, unfinished scenes, awkward dialogue, and lots places where it's nothing more than a steaming pile. I need a plan. Last year I started editing, but didn't finish. I ran out of steam almost immediately. Probably because I jumped in, feet first, at word number 1, with out a plan. This year I am working on a strategy. And I have done a little research on the editing process. And this is what I've got so far:

1. Smooth out the plot. I want to get a good handle on my story line and make sure it all makes sense before I start tweaking the prose. I don't know what's going to stay and what's going to go right now. So, there's no point to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
2. Once the plot has been thoroughly hammered out, I'll move onto filling in the unfinished scenes. I jumped around a lot writing this scene, then starting that one during NaNoWriMo. Now I will fill in all those pot holes to create one contiguous rough draft.
3. This step will make that draft less rough. With a coherent and fleshed out story, I can now work on sculpting the story into something more elegant and artful. Here, I'll go line by line wordsmithing the draft into a novel. Hopefully it will be a novel that someone, somewhere out there, will actually want to read. (Cue the music from "An American Tail")
4. Wash, rinse, and repeat step 3 over and over and over again. There is always room for improvement.
5. When I think it's ready...hand it off to someone and have them critique it. I'm already ahead of the game on this one. I joined a local writing/critique group. So, when I've edited the living daylights out of my manuscript, I hope that group can help me get it ready for a possible shot at publishing.

During my planning process I found these websites to be helpful in creating an editing road map:

• http://www.nanowrimo.org/nowwhat - NaNoWriMo's I wrote a novel, now what? Page
• http://tinyurl.com/yavn5pt - Editing Tips for the Aspiring Writer
• http://tinyurl.com/yemtwyp - A veritable plethora of links to editing tips
• http://tinyurl.com/yhq4nxl - Basic tips for editing your novel

With all the time afforded me with NaNoWriMo now over, I'll be posting much more frequently. I leave for vacation in NYC tomorrow. And since it isn't a backwater town, I'm sure I will have internet access. So, check back soon for my vacations posts about my writing spot of the day and to see if I stick to my editing plan.