~ Ernest Hemingway

(Courtesy of Be a Better Writer)

~William Safire, “Great Rules of Writing”

(Courtesy of Quote Garden)

While NaNoWriMo didn’t go as planned, I did learn a lot about my writing style. Primarily, I learned I need to bind and gag my inner editor before I start writing. Otherwise, she’s like a greased pig and there’s just no stopping her squealing when I’m in mid-sentence and she doesn’t like the direction I’m going in. I also learned that it’s okay to let go of a project and move on. I may come back to my idea, but for now, I’m revising a middle grade manuscript I’ve been working on for a while.

I’m spending some quality time re-examining it using Martha Alderson’s PlotWriMo series (International Plot Writing Month). I’m getting back to basics. I’m going back to the start. While PlotWriMo has been fantastic for refocusing my manuscript, another useful analysis tool is Amazon.com’s “Look Inside” feature. You can read the first few pages of a fair number of books, which is a great way to get a sense of how to craft a good beginning to your novel.

My walls, my box.
Decorated by your conditions.
Borders of conformity I dare not cross –
For shame of trying electrocutes me.

This box, your box.
Why did you build it?
To covet love cheated from childhood,
Or to subject subordination?

Your walls, your box.
Battered my yearning spirit.
Feelings of disgrace I cannot endure –
For desire of mattering awakens me.

In your box, I was.
Chained by anxiety
To the walls of your love.
Liberated from austerity, empowered by resolve.

Panic is no longer taunting me from afar. It has moved in. Suddenly, those 50,000 words have gone from simply imposing to downright impossible. My plotting efforts feel like a lump of wet clay on the pottery wheel that keeps spinning round and round, refusing to take shape.

So I decided to take a break from plotting my story and for my little mental holiday, I’m hanging out in the land of Oz. My hope is that by identifying the plot structure of an existing story – the inciting incident, foreshadowing, turning points, dramatic action, crisis points, climax,and whatnot – it will help me to establish the same in my own.

The great thing about using a story like The Wizard of Oz as a plotting exercise is that it not only provides an easily identifiable plot skeleton, it does so while delivering a wonderful set of characters, strong settings, difficult hurdles, and meaningful messages. By picking this story apart, I have begun to see just how important each element is to the whole.

Characters

Image via Wikipedia

You’ve got your innocent, sympathetic main character, dreaming her big dream, finding herself in it and deciding it’s not for her. The wicked antagonist who wants her cool new shoes and will kill for them. The elusive bubble mentor, giving just enough advice to set the protagonist off on her quest, but not enough answers to satisfy that burning need to know how to get back to where she started. You’ve got your flawed supporting characters, each on their own quest, mirroring the universal quests for thought, compassion, and a little bit of courage in life. And let’s not forget the all-seeing, all-powerful false prophet. Each of the characters in the story have clearly defined roles. Even the little dog, too.

Settings

Who wouldn’t want out of that old world, dipped in sepia tones, dust, and austerity? When the protagonist steps through the door into the new world, it is so flush and lush with color and weird people with bad hair, that you can’t help but want to explore it with her. Then she enters into the forbidden places where nature acts unnatural and monkeys aren’t cute anymore. And how about that cold castle of fear imprisoning all hope and goodness? It still sends chills up my spine. I get clammy just thinking about it. To me, the settings in The Wizard of Oz are as strong and individual as the characters.

Hurdles

Who can forget the obstacles the protagonist has to overcome? Out-running a twister, desperately trying to get to the people she loves and having to settle for riding out the storm by herself, terrified, in her bedroom. Then she finds herself over that rainbow she was wishing for earlier, only now, she’s lost in this new and twisted place, trying to find the exit sign. She meets up with characters she’s not sure are friend or foe, makes a leap of faith, and helps them out of their predicaments. She sees her goal in the distance, but gets so tired, she just has to stop moving. Then she  finally reaches her goal, only to find that she needs one more crucial piece to complete her journey and it’s smack in the middle of the antagonist’s lair and the only way to get it, is to defeat the green chick who wants her shoes.

Messages

The Wizard of Oz delivers many pearls of wisdom along the way. The messages I see are: Be grateful for what you have. Be careful what you wish for. Live by the Golden Rule. And believe in yourself.

Believe in yourself. How fitting.

Any others out there with some mental tricks to help them through NaNoWriMo?

I’ve been reading various blogs from NaNoWriMo veterans, Chuck Wendig’s run-down of 25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo (warning, the language is a bit saucy) is as good a place as any to put the task into sharp focus. The Plot Whisperer Martha Alderson‘s YouTube series on plotting has also been helpful. She does a great job of breaking plot elements down and is so cheerful in her delivery that it’s hard not to want to take the NaNoWriMo plunge.

But I have to say, I’m a little nervous about ignoring my family, dogs, and house in my pursuit of churning out 1,666 words a day. I’m hopeful the past year’s worth of cooking lessons I’ve given my oldest child will pay off. He and his brother might be eating nothing but pasta and grilled cheese for their dinners, but I’m confident he’ll vary the menu with some buttered toast every now and again. Heck, he might even remember how to fry an egg. I can hope. Perhaps I should stock up on PopTarts just in case. And I’m sure after I withhold Minecraft privileges from my younger son in exchange for tidying up, he’ll comply. Hey, I’ve got to write, right? Strong-arm tactics are necessary.

So for the month of October, my plan is to outline my story. I’ve got my setting sorted out, my main character is formed, the supporting characters are mostly formed, the antagonist is looming large, and I’ve worked out the plotlines in my head. I’ve got my playlist loaded and running. My book bible is ready, all shiny and new, with fancy binder tabs that I had to hide from my kids when we were organizing their back-to-school stuff. I think I am ready to start outlining this puppy.

I can do this. I’m pretty sure. Well, I’m gonna try.

Any others out there taking the NaNoWriMo plunge for the first time? What are you doing to prepare?

Cape Porpoise by Sarah Phillips Pellet

I had the occasion to visit my family in Maine over the summer and took this picture. While I love the dramatic clouds and the sun hitting the houses to the left, I admit I was somewhat disappointed I couldn’t take the shot at high tide. At high tide, the docks and boats are floating and everything looks picturesque. Like a postcard. Perfect. It’s the way the most people want to see it. In fact, while I was taking this picture a tourist was standing nearby with her camera, she shrugged and yelled over to where I stood, “Shame it’s low tide.” I get it. Low tide is just, well, low tide. It smells dank and musty (or worse), flies and mosquitoes buzz about the sea grass, little dead crabs and other ocean cast-offs cling to the glistening muck, and as you can see, pleasure boats tilt to their sides, waiting for high tide to come so they can go out to play in the sea.

But then I thought about what’s really going on in this picture and decided that I love it, low tide and all. In fact, I think I like it better than the high tide pictures I’ve taken over the years. Why? Because it tells the real story of the place.

Sometimes you need the tide to go out in order to reveal things – like peeling back a layer of a facade. This can be figuratively or literally, as in the case of this picture. Low tide here reveals a dredged harbor. It separates the pleasure boats from the working boats. The pleasure boats (a fair number of them), lie useless on the seabed for several hours twice a day, while the working boats, they can maneuver out to sea no matter the tide level. This isn’t just a pretty place on the coast of Maine. It’s a working fishing village. There’s a story here. It says something about the people who work here and their way of life. Low tide also reveals boulders and other boating hazards that lie beneath the surface during high tide. If you don’t know they’re there, you’ll hit them and damage your boat or perhaps capsize and get hurt. Peeling back the facade shows what you need to look out for when things change.

So now I’m thinking hard about my setting in my next book. What’s the high tide story – the picture perfect story? What does that look like? What happens there, when everything is peachy-keen? Conversely, what happens at low tide, when night falls, the weather changes, or when the perfect facade is peeled back? What does it reveal? How does the landscape change? What – or who – comes out when things change? What hazards are exposed? How do the characters discover them?

This picture has taught me to really think about setting in a dynamic way. I like it.

We went up to our cabin on Friday and put Oscar in a clear container for the hour-long ride. He was fine. I put him into the vase we use at the lake for his temporary bowl and he swam frenetically around, like he usually does.

I even put him on the shelf so he could see the lake while he swam.

Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe he looked out of his fish bowl, saw the lake, and tried so hard to swim there that he died trying? I don’t know. My son, the rightful owner of Oscar, having won him at a carnival and carried him carefully home in a plastic baggie last summer, thought it was because we overfed him. I guess we will never know.

But still, I feel bad. Poor Oscar. He’s in the garden now, having been unceremoniously dumped there by my son. We stood there, not really knowing what to say, looking down between the lavender and sedum where he lay, still wondering why he seemed fine in the morning, only to be lying at the bottom of the vase a few hours later.

“He was a good fish,” said my son finally, then he tucked the vase under his arm and headed back into the cabin.

It’s a weird feeling, having a pet fish die. I’m a dog person myself. I like to interact with my pets. I always felt that the fish was somehow aloof, uncaring. Yet, Oscar did have a personality. Of sorts. He was pretty hyper and seemed to like being fed. Our other fish, Achilles, doesn’t really do much. He’s a beautiful blue Betta fish. But he’s a poser. Oscar was just a plain, simple goldfish. He had to work to get our attention. Maybe that’s why I feel bad. Oscar tried hard.

He was a good fish.

Old North Bridge by Sarah Phillips Pellet

I have a scene in my current Work In Progress (WIP) where my main character and his sidekick encounter a raging river. While I grew up nearby the Concord River in Massachusetts and spent many an afternoon roaming around the gardens of Buttrick Mansion and canoeing under the Old North Bridge, I haven’t spent much time on rivers in my adult life. So to re-enforce my memories, I turned to a virtual source for my setting’s inspiration: Facebook.