Only a Part of the Story

We've been experimenting with POV in Kirby's class lately, and so I've been thinking about it a lot. So, since it's been on my mind, here's a post all about it! :)

Take a look at Gregory Maguire's Wicked, John Gardner's Grendel, and the musical Into The Woods. They turn well-established stories (The Wizard of Oz, Beowulf, and a mash of classic faerie tales, respectively) and turn them on their heads.

They also go to show us that the story we're given is only a part of the overall picture. There are so many people and so many points of view that it's impossible to tell the "whole story" in one go. This is partly why I love third person--I can get multiple viewpoints in a story and really round the story out.

In The Surface of the Deep, I use third person, and tell the story from two main points of view, occasionally using the POV of one or two of the secondaries, both for a bit of spice and the inclusion of story points that I couldn't get from my two main characters.

It's important to know whose POV you're going to use. I mean, come on, Harry Potter would have been a completely different series from, say, Snape's point of view, and your story could be completely different from the eyes of the cleaning lady instead of the lawyer. It's like a court case: Everybody has a side.

The Kirby used a great exercise to get us to utilize different points of view. He put on a video (which I've posted below) in a language we didn't know, hid the subtitles, and told us to rewrite the scene in our own way. But there was a catch--girls had to write from the guy's POV, and the guys had to write from the woman's POV (just for the record, mine involved zombies and explosives. We didn't have to stick *exactly* to what happened. The only thing we had to keep was the slap).

The video:




So, hey, why don't you guys give it a shot? Either use this video and the exercise the Kirby gave us, or take a scene from your WiP and write it from the POV of a different character. It really changes it up, doesn't it?

The point of this? Just know that there are multiple sides to every story, and you can really pack a wallop (yes, I said 'pack a wallop') if you decide to switch it up.

Have a great Sunday, all! I don't have a football team, but if you do, hope the SuperBowl leaves ya' happy. :)

--Jenna.

Outlines Revisited

Whew. I'm back. The history essay is out of the way, the ACT is over with (I'd tell you all about it, but if I do, the ACT ninjas will track me down and silence me), and all of my major worries, excepting the Kirby's MLA paper, are off of my plate for now. Mother and I have had a nice chat or two, and we're working on ironing my panic right on out.

So.

Things are better.

Thanks to everybody who commented, emailed, Tweeted, Facebooked, MySpaced, IMmed, or [insert other social media tool here]-ed at me and gave me a virtual hug. I appreciate it. :)

One of the big things that has been weighing on me is the fact that I had to delete half of chapter eight in tSotD, and that I have to rewrite pretty much the final third of the book. This is mostly due to the fact that large portions of the final chapters haven't been touched since they were originally written...for NaNoWriMo '08. There is some horribly crappy writing involved, not to mention (though I shall, anyway) gaping plot holes. I have also added more to the beginning and middle, and the end has not yet been fixed to incorporate those changes. It's easier to use the original writing as a guideline and just rewrite most of it.

Which is daunting.

I've mentioned before that when I don't write, I get stressed. And when I get stressed, I can't write. It gets wrapped up in a never-ending cycle of dooooom. That's doom with five o's. Heh.

Basically, the huge, daunting task of rewriting five to six chapters has really kind of scared me away from my own writing, and, amidst all of the other dooooom (again, with five o's) and gloom, I've completely fizzled out. I honest-to-God have not touched the manuscript in about one and a half, maybe two weeks.

So I have come up with a most elegant solution: Outlines!

In the original outline, I didn't outline each little thing, just the big picture. I have a few outlines for the early chapters, and a very basic one for the climax, but those have since fallen out of date due to various new plot lines, etc. I'm currently working on an updated outline for chapters eight through fifteen, which includes each detail I know I need to include so that the final third meshes with the rest of the book. It's been slow going, primarily due to this mad bout of depression and moodiness, but now that I'm feeling better I'm going pretty quickly. Hopefully I'll finish by mid to late tomorrow and can start doing some writing and revisions.

Whew! I feel so much better now. Thanks again for all the virtual hugs and advice, everybody. It's great to know I've got some peeps out there who are lookin' out for me. :)

Happy weekend and amazing writing wishes!

--Jenna.

Fail.

So. I've had posts planned for every single day I haven't posted this week. Actually, for every day I haven't posted over the past several MONTHS there has been a planned post. I have so many things I could post about. I got a blog award ages ago. I got a tag. There are excerpts to be posted for Teaser Tuesday, updates (or, well, a lack thereof) to be posted for WiP Wednesday, and various other things to be talked about.

But I haven't been.

Why?

Lack of energy. Lack of motivation. Lack of everything that used to make me want to do anything. I haven't written in ages. I haven't blogged much. The only things I post on Twitter and Facebook lately are long lists of complaints and lots of whining. School is hard, crunch time is grinding us all beneath its heel, I have so much crap to worry about that my head is about to explode. There are papers to write, projects to do, notes to memorize, math problems to calculate, verbs to conjugate, current events to report, lab reports to do, and pages and pages of to-do lists that I can't keep up with.

It's partly because I'm lazy. I'm not going to lie. But, damn, it's so hard these days to get motivated about ANYTHING. I drag myself out of bed every morning, bumble through the day, bitch at people, spend hours doing nothing, make a sad attempt at completing my homework, click around on the Internet for a bit, and then crawl back into bed. I'm surviving. Barely. But I'm not living, really. And I don't like it. I'm unhappy in most things, and the smallest, teeniest bit of irritation can--and does, often--make me start sobbing into the arms of whoever happens to be standing closest. I haven't talked to my nana in days, my mother is sick of me, I haven't been able to hang out with my best friend in forever, and I'm so damn tired of everything that I could scream.

Normally this is the kind of post that would go on the Delusional, but I have more readers here, and I need you guys to know that I'm trying. I'm trying to keep going, and keep this blog at least somewhat updated so I can pretend I have something to look forward to each day. I'm trying to at least read your blog posts, though I haven't in a few days. I'm trying to not whine about things that I'm sure nobody cares about.

But it's hard.

So...I don't know. I'm going to stop scheduling posts, I guess, since they never get written, anyway. I don't know how long I'll be out of the loop, only that it will be a while. I'll post when I can, though I can't promise it will ever be more than an, "I'm still alive."

Catch you on the flip side.

--Jenna.

Nike Knows

You know, I think my favorite piece of writing advice comes from Nike: "Just do it."

Seriously, though. Lately I've been off my game, and I keep saying, "oh, I don't have time," or, "man, I was going to do some revising, but I got so caught up in such-and such." If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that writing is one of the main ways I unwind. So when I don't, things get worse if they were bad and bad if they were okay.

I have a lot of little things posted around my office, like neat quotes and pictures and things. The "Just do it" bit is the newest addition. It's so true. If you're a writer, you've just got to sit down and tackle it. Stop making excuses, stop putting it off, stop being lazy. You can't get anywhere unless you work for it.

So.

Just do it.

Play That Funky Music

I'm in a bloggy funk. I'm running out of ideas that I like, I want a new layout but something goes wrong with each new one I try to install, I don't have a lot of time to spend on it, and, overall, it's become the thing that I dread above all else: a chore.

And it's not just blogging, either--I was going strong with the revisions for awhile, but now it's just...ugh. I had to delete half of a chapter on Monday, and I haven't touched it since. I'm not happy with anything new I write, and everything is just kind of up in flames. Again.

I have an MLA paper to work on for English. It's evil, and the prospect of more of the damn things is almost enough to make the idea of pursuing higher education seem like a big, fat, stupid, unfunny joke.

School is amping up, I'm trying to not feel stupid amidst the seas of people who seem like they know what the hell they're doing when I don't, blogging and writing have little appeal at the moment, and the only thing I want to do is hole up in my room, curl up under my blanket, and just wait there until the world is sane again.

And, of course, there's the constant muttering of the little voice in my head that tells me that being stressed is unbelievably selfish, since there are people that are dealing with tons more than I am at the moment.

*Headdesk.*

Help?

Unplug Week

Too much to do, too little time in which to do it. Unplugging 'till Friday afternoon. You won't see me, I won't see you, I doubt I'll have time to fill out a postcard.

See you Friday.

What Happened to Bob?

Also, what happened to Jenna? I fell off the face of the earth, I know. Busy life. I've had a lot of things to take care of and, as per usual in such situations, blogging fell to the wayside. Again. So I'm pushing yesterday's post to today, and I'll be passing on that blog award...Sunday, maybe? We'll see.

To start this post off, I have a question for you: have you ever "lost" a character? Have you ever gotten so wrapped up in a scene that a certain character just fades into the background and is never seen again?

I like to call this "What Happened to Bob?" Syndrome.

It's happened to me before, and usually it's because there are too many characters in a scene. I find that the best way to get rid of the problem is to get rid of a few characters--whether just for the scene, or for the entire novel. Take Bob and give 'im the boot.

Of course, there are times when you don't want to or can't, for some reason or another. Maybe Bob has an important line of dialogue, but fades into the background until he needs to say it, or just seems to vanish after it is delivered. Go back to the places where Bob has vanished and stick in a line or two of dialogue, or mention his actions, etc. Find a way to get him back in there.

"What Happened to Bob?" Syndrome happened to me during a scene in tSotD with Bryson. Bryson said a few things, did a few things, and then, poof, he was gone until the very end of the scene. And it was conspicuous. The rest of the characters were very involved, and I had a beta reader ask me if Bryson had left to go do something else. I fixed this by giving him a few more lines that, while maybe not absolutely necessary, helped get him back in the scene.

Don't let your readers ask what happened to Bob!

Question:

Do you ever experience "What Happened to Bob" Syndrome? How do you correct it?