Fishboning Clears Story Tangles For Me

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: "The most difficult scene you ever wrote and why."

If I have a scene that for some reason isn’t flowing well, I remind myself that the first draft is supposed to be ugly. It’s allowed to be fragmentary and lacking details and maybe even full of X’s here and there or notes to myself like “add more here”. I just have to get words on the paper (or into the computer file) and build from there.

(Time for my standard disclaimer that there is NO one rule for how to write and everyone should write their books in whatever way works for THEM.)

I do as much as I have creativity for on the first pass and then each time I re-open the file thereafter, to keep writing the rest of the narrative rather than obsess over the one scene, I do go through the specific moment again and build upon it, refine it, in a process I think of as ‘layering’.  Each time I touch it, I end up adding words and depth and color and actions and…by the time I finish the entire book, each scene inside is finished.

DepositPhoto - A classic fishbone diagram.
The ones I do for my writing do NOT look like this.

If I’m really at a standstill, I fall back onto what I call ‘fishboning’, in honor of a very useful process improvement technique from my days at NASA/JPL.  I end up building a structure with the possibilities that flow from any decision a character could make in the scene’s situation (or that I, the omniscient author might drop upon their heads) and as I brainstorm and work through this, the path with the most possibilities or the most exciting-to-me events along the way becomes clear and off I go to write. I can’t tell you how many times this has worked infallibly for me. I use my trusty, very sharp No. 2 pencil and a pad of legal sized yellow (or lavender) paper. Something about doing this just really clears the way for my Muse or my creativity or whatever one chooses to call it, to break loose and enhance the story telling.

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In actual fact, it’s a combination of true fishboning for root cause analysis and “The Five Whys” technique developed by Sakichi Toyoda, where you drill down and down to what the ultimate root cause of any problem may be. The fishbone is a cause analysis tool, which a trained facilitator (which I used to be) might pull out to use when a problem solving team has hit a dead end or finds itself in a rut.

I am a NASA Lean Six Sigma Black Belt so trust me, I’ve had training in these and many more process improvement techniques. I’ve amalgamated and adapted them for this creative purpose of mine and it leads my Muse through the cluttered field to the right path for the story.

Now most of the time I just sit down and write the book, and don’t do any fishboning or anything else. The story flows, I type and it’s all good. But every once in a while, perhaps once or twice per book, I resort to pencil and pad and brainstorm.

As far as the most difficult scene to write because it affected me so much – there’s a scene in  Timtur, book 2.5 of the Badari Warriors series, where Lily the human heroine sits through the night with a dying soldier and does her best to comfort him, even forgiving him for participating in kidnapping her. (And no, this is a supporting character, not the hero.) Folks, I cried writing this scene. I’ve never had that happen to me before or since on a book I wrote.

I have a feeling the scene might be mining an experience in my own past where I sat vigil through the night by a person beloved to me who was not going to survive. (I’m not normally too self-reflective or even conscious of where and what influences my Muse is drawing upon deep inside my own memory and experiences to spin the stories I write. Sorry if it seems weird to discuss my writing process as disengaged somehow from my everyday, entirely rational ‘thinking’ mind, but when I write, I’m in the flow.)

So anyway, here’s a portion of that scene. Lily and the dying soldier are both imprisoned within an alien lab:

Hastily, Lily ran to the sink and filled a piece of lab glassware with water, before going to the table where Hilkirr was restrained.

He lay still, fangs and talons extended, all the veins in his body standing out and glowing blue as if filled with liquid phosphorescence. As she approached the table she observed his eyes were open and his breathing was labored.

“I brought you the water,” she said in a near whisper. “Can you raise your head enough to drink?”

“Teacher?” He blinked as if his vision was impaired, although even in the darkened lab he ought to be able see so much better than she could.

“Yes, it’s me.” She slipped one arm under his head and helped him get the right angle to sip at the water, although he didn’t take much. His whole body trembled.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Stay?”

Lily shot a glance at the door, assessing the risk.

“Please?” His voice was a raw thread of its former volume. “I—I don’t want to be alone, and I can’t hear the pack in my head anymore.”

“All right.” She searched for a stool or a chair and found one shoved into a corner. She went to retrieve it then sat next to the table, wrapping both of her hands around one of his, mindful of the extended talons. “I wish I knew how to get these restraints off so you could lie more comfortably.”

“No. It’s better this way.” Hilkirr shook his head feebly. “Might hurt you.”

“I don’t believe you would,” she said as warmly as she could. “Do you need more water? Are you cold? I could try to find a lab coat or a blanket.”

“Just your company.”

“Okay.” She sat and closed her eyes, unable to bear looking at his abused body for too long. His grotesquely expanded muscles and tendons were distressing, as were the brownish-yellow bruises spreading over his body as the experiment slowly extinguished his life. The glowing blue of his veins was fading, to be replaced by more ominous colors, a vile mix of purple and black.

Hilkirr’s clasp grew lax, and she sat up with a start, afraid he’d died, but he’d only dozed off. She went to the sink and got a wet cloth. Back in her place beside the table, she brushed his hair off his face then bathed his upper body carefully, as much as she could reach, drying him off with another, softer cloth.

With obvious effort, he turned his face toward her. “Feels good.”

“I wish I could do more.” After dropping the cloths in the refuse bin, she resumed her spot in the chair and clasped his hand again.

“I’m sorry, teacher. We shouldn’t have kidnapped you. That was wrong.”

“I forgive you,” she said and found she meant it. Hilkirr had suffered so much as a result of following Vattan into this hellish lab that she only had pity for him.

“Swore a blood oath to my Alpha,” he said. “Had to obey.”

“I understand.” Lily wasn’t sure she truly did but pack meant everything to the Badari, and blood was the magic used to seal all their most important bonds and agreements.

“Wish Aydarr had been my Alpha. The valley was so beautiful.” Now his voice was wistful, and Lily had to blink back tears.

“I’m glad you got to live there in freedom for at least a little while.” Sorrow in her heart like a stone, she patted his hand and wished she could do more.

“Do you think the goddess will forgive me? Can she forgive me?” His whisper was intense.

Lily bit her lip, throat tight with repressed sorrow, pondering how best to answer the question. What would Timtur say to comfort a dying comrade at a time like this? Words came to mind. “I don’t know much about your goddess. But I know you call her your Great Mother, and I know a mother loves all her children equally and forgives them. So, you hang onto that thought.”

“You should be a mother,” Hilkirr said a minute or two later, surprising her. “The cubs all love you, did you know that? The boys think the Great Mother sent you to them.”

“Maybe someday I’ll have a baby,” she said, thinking of Timtur and what a child born of the two of them might be like. Motherhood was a dream far removed from her current situation and she pushed the happy subject to the back of her mind with regret.  Her muscles were complaining at the awkward position so she shifted a bit and stretched, while hanging onto Hilkirr’s hand. “Do you need more water? Are you in pain?”

“Can’t see anything. Can’t feel anything.” His hand twitched. “Other than your fingers. Warm. Nice. Would you sing? Like you do for the cubs after classes, if they’ve been really good?”

Happy to have something she could do to comfort him, she said, “Of course.”

******************************************************

There's more to the scene in the novel but I think this gives the flavor...

Curing Writer's Block

Happy Friday the 13th! Gather up your good luck charms while ye may. I've got mine.

We're chatting difficult scenes and writer's block this week.

Have you ever had one of those arguments where long after it's over, you bolt awake knowing exactly what you SHOULD have said??

That's me writing scenes. Any scene. I've learned this about myself, though, so I give myself permission to write my the high emotion/high conflict scenes as pieces of junk first. They flow pretty easily because I know that overnight or in the shower the next morning, I'll suddenly get this brain dump of all the things I should have had these characters say to make everything much worse.

Yeah, but what about the scenes that aren't like that? *Shrug* I can't tell you what scene was hardest. Mainly because I get stuck so often. When I do, though, it is almost always because I can't see a way forward within whatever scene I'm working on. I get wrapped up in the back and forth between characters, but I may not necessarily be moving the story or conflict. That stops me every time, and I bog down.

To move forward, I have to walk away from the recalcitrant scene. I move on to the next place where I know what happens. Or I work backwards from the end of the book. I almost always know where and how my books end. I know the beginning. I very know the middle. Which, of surprise to no one, is where I get stuck. But you know what? There's no magic in writing in a straight line. There's no reason not to skip and hop around inside a story if it's what breaks you free.

For me, working from the end reminds me of what these characters have at stake. I'm reminded of what matters to the arc of the story. Based on that, I can go back to the scene where I bogged down and I can ruthlessly pare it down to its bones - to the skeleton that supports the tissues and fibers of the story.

I suspect strongly that one of the major cures of writers block is giving up the notion that there are Right Answers when it comes to plotting and executing a story. There's only 'hey, this looks like an interesting direction, let's try it!'

How to cheat yourself out of a difficult scene/writer's block.

This week we’re talking about the most difficult scene we’ve ever written. And I really don’t want to talk about it because I don’t have the mental capacity to unbox that at the moment. So, I’m going to cheat!

Cheating’s fun! We do it all the time! That donut in the break room, the extra coffee even though we’ve already had a whole pot, staying up till the wee hours of the morning to finish that Netflix series or book. We cheat in life.

And if you find yourself stuck…writer's blocked…try a cheat! 

*This is for those times you’re simply stuck: can’t think of what to write, can’t figure out how to get your characters from point A to point B, can’t get the words on the page. 

Are you wondering how to cheat at writing? It’s as easy as reaching for that glazed old-fashioned. Simply fill in a sentence or two, or however many it takes, to warp-speed you to the next scene that formulates in your head or the next plot point in your summary.

YMMV, but when I’m stuck with writer’s block I just need to find a way past that sticky point because my brain is what’s stuck on that scene, those details that don’t fit, or that plot hole that I can’t see yet but my subconscious knows is there. 

By cheating, I give my brain a pass to move on and return to production state. By cheating, I’m giving myself a bandaid that will eventually fall off, because those dang things never stay on long enough, but by the time it slips free it’s usually because I’ve found the source of the plot hole or character inconsistency and fixed it. By cheating, I take away the stress. Did you get that? It takes away the stress which is the biggest road block of anything, mentally and physically. Get rid of the stress and everything opens up.

An example? I was writing THE MARS STRAIN and my MC, Juliet, had to end up at the CDC with the Martian virus. But!!! I didn’t know how to get her there. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. I wasted a month staring at my computer screen, trying to write and ending up with a handful of words or some nifty new adjectives. 

Then, I decided to glaze over the details on how she got to Atlanta and focus on what she’d be feeling when she got there. So I wrote, and Juliet had a breakdown, a full-on sob fest breakdown from the stress of fighting the Strain, losing her best friend, and possibly losing the man she loves. And then I knew exactly what had to happen before she reached the CDC!

Game over writer’s block! I’d broken through and all it took was a little cheating. 

Go ahead! Give it a try! Reach for that cake donut, toss a couple glaze-over-sentences in that WIP and move on! 

(Which totally has me craving one right now…I’m going to have to convince my wonderful, amazing husband that it’s time to whip up a batch. Since I can’t eat store bought ones the only donuts I get are his made with organic heritage wheat. Jon, you’ve been warned!)

Those murderous first 20k words

Writers talk a lot about being blocked, getting over blocks, getting unstuck: the malaise has a lot of terms. And a lot of solutions. Just Google "writer's block" and settle in for a bunch of fun reading. But what if the block is more than just a block but is actually more of whole-thing a slog and you wouldn't call it writer's block, exactly?

Further, what if that slog-state happens every time you start a new book? Every. Single. Time.

Here's my fancy term for when that happens: the murderous first 20k. And if you're experiencing that, man, I feel ya.

If you've ever taken a workshop or read a book on story structure, you're familiar with that 20% mark. It's where the first major story-spanning conflict is introduced. I mean, inciting incidents happen before, but right at that 1/5 spot, your story approaches a cliff and should be ready to leap off into the great adventure it's about to become. It's a heady moment for both story and storyteller. If I know my characters and their mission at that point, the rest of the book is like a roller coaster: it just speeds along and takes my breath away and is so freaking fun.

But everything leading up to that point? Is hell. Figuring out who my characters are, what they want, what their mission is, what's making that mission impossible ... as an organic-style "pantser" type writer, I'm often figuring out those things as I go, which means a lot of rewriting and rethinking goes on in that first fifth of the story.

Here's the hardest truth I've learned about the first 20k: if I get to that cliff and am not excited about shoving my characters off it, the story premise probably isn't very good, and readers probably won't be very engaged. So I end up stopping at of stories right there.

In business, management types sometimes adopt a "fail fast" strategy, and I guess that's kind of what I'm advocating here. If the first 20% does not work, if every word to that point was a slog and none of it is coming together at that point, your story might just be a victim of those nasty, murderous first 20k.

Scenes That Refuse To Be Written: Writer's Block or Lack of Focus?

My mind's astounding ability to be recalcitrant and adamantly refuse to focus is what makes a scene "difficult to write." I've yet to encounter a scene that's "too emotional" or "too...too" to put into words. I've written scenes that made me cry--which I consider a good thing. If they don't provoke an emotional response from me, the creator of the characters and world, I can't expect the reader to care nearly as much, right? I've written such detailed fight scenes that I've acted out the staging to ensure plausibility. Do the readers care as much as I do that it's left foot forward, right shoulder back? Possibly not. Didn't stop me from spending a lot of creative time penning that scene.

Are there scenes that didn't turn out the way I'd thought they would? Oh sure. Are there scenes that didn't come remotely close to what the outline said they should? ~slaps knee~ Oh, so very many. Are there scenes that ripped out my heart that exist only in a Cut Scenes file? Ayup.

Now, what do I do when my mind says, "Yeah, no, no we're not holding a steady train of thought today"?  Oh, dear reader, I wish I had some glib sure-fire solution. I wish I could say those No Words days only lasted a day or two. I don't classify those days as "writer's block," because I know what should happen in that scene. I'm not creatively stumped, I'm unable to focus. Different problems.

Writer's block is akin to having no pulse from your creativity feed. Solution? Immerse yourself in the creativity of others. Let their spark be your jolt. Let their imaginations be the yeast that helps yours grow. Rest. Let that yeast ferment, let your creativity proof, rise. Pretty soon the story is ready to bake. No guilt. No time wasted. It's all part of the process.

Lack of focus? Gah! It's opening the doc, staring at the chapter header and knowing that the opening paragraph is setting the scene...yet envisioning the setting opens all thirteen-hundred tabs in your mental browser and now you're wondering if you should be planting the wildflower seeds or if you've properly calculated the time and budget for Universal Design modifications on the off chance your aging parents will need to relocate and if you release four books a year you might be able to get to that series about those characters that have that thing but... By the time you shut down all the extraneous tabs, you've blown through your day, your eyes are barely open, and the cursor is still flashing after the chapter header. That...that is my challenge, dear reader. I don't know the answer. Meditation? Discipline? Mindfulness? Uh. For some, maybe? But, if you too suffer from Squirrel!, you're not alone. It just takes us a little longer to get to The End.

When Writers Block Means to Dig Deeper

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: "The most difficult scene you ever wrote and why."

I'm guessing that's why was it difficult, not why we wrote it. Though I do think the why we wrote the scene in the first place is relevant.

There's a school of thought among writers and writerly-advice givers that if a story becomes difficult - if the writer hits a block and grinds to a stop - then that's an indicator of Something Gone Wrong. I see this advice a lot. Writers will say - often in response to questions about how they handle Writer's Block - "When I hit a block, I know I've done something wrong, taken a wrong turn somewhere, so I go back and rework the plot."

You all have heard a version of this, right?

Makes me cringe every time. I'll tell you why.

What I hear in this dubious advice is writers advocating walking away from the hard parts and looking for an easier path forward. Now, I know this isn't always the case. Part of becoming a professional writer is learning to decipher your own internal voices - to differentiate between laziness and being truly depleted. To separate painfully accurate critique from toxic attempts to undermine you. To know when resistance means you took a wrong turn - OR when it means you need to dig deeper.

{{{Important caveat: Sometimes writers block can mean depression. Or physical or emotional exhaustion. I'm talking about if those factors have been ruled out. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish and Mary Robinette Kowal has a great post about it.}}}

For me, resistance has always meant I need to put my nose to the grindstone. Keep picking at that wall. Make myself walk through the fire. Pick your metaphor: in my experience, the best stuff lies on the other side of that wall. I've experienced it repeatedly.

My friend and SFF author Kelly Robson talks about not taking the Monkey Bypass. That's a great essay she wrote about it at the link. In essence, the Monkey Bypass is an opportunity to avoid filth and damage. Robson argues, and I agree, that you can't let your characters bypass danger. I think an author also can't allow herself to retreat from pain and difficulty.

Why have I persisted in writing those difficult scenes? Because the story required it.

I have never once been sorry that I kept pushing through those blockades.

I recently released THE FATE OF THE TALA, the climactic book in my Twelve Kingdoms and Uncharted Realms series. Those who follow me regularly - especially those who listen to my daily (almost) podcast, First Cup of Coffee - know that I had a hell of a time writing this book. I'm not sure if I can point to a specific scene, because the whole freaking book was mostly picking at that wall. And kicking it, pummeling it, then collapsing in a sobbing heap and scraping myself together to try again.

At one point, my mom - who listens to my podcast with the loyalty of a mom - asked if I couldn't just put the book down, walk away from it and write something else for a while. "Isn't this supposed to be fun?" she asked.

Well... no. I don't believe that good art only comes from suffering, but sometimes writers DO need to hold their own feet to the fire to get to the good stuff.

I discovered a lot of things in writing that book - and not just that it's a bitch to write a novel that ties up a 16-episode thread (counting novels and shorter works in the arc). I realized I was working out emotional issues in my own life and marriage that I hadn't faced. And I discovered amazing things from the seeds I'd planted ten years ago, when I began writing THE MARK OF THE TALA.

Now I have readers coming back and telling me how they loved the way I tied this up. Here's one from this morning:

I am amazed at how well you brought it all together in this last book! It was so good; I cried several times. It got me through a very difficult week, when I’m not sure any other book would have held my attention. Thank you!!

— SonomaLass *Warren for Majority Leader* (@SonomaLass) March 8, 2020

Totally worth that slog through the monkey enclosure!

Lack of Trust Isn't the Issue

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This week at the SFF Seven, we're asking: how do you know who to trust with your writing, especially early drafts and idea bouncing.

It’s not a question of trust for me, it’s a question of the way I work, which is that I never share a work in progress with anyone, ever. I’m not afraid of ideas being stolen but rather that whatever story I’m telling is MY story, with my characters and I’m not interested in how anyone else might think the story should go. Ooh, you might be saying, crochety much? No, just stubborn and confident in my story telling abilities. Not trying to sound arrogant but I don’t need or want other opinions when it comes to exercising my creativity and telling my version of a story at the ancestral campfire. (For sure no one beta read or critiqued those first story tellers LOL!)

 I brainstorm with myself if I encounter plot challenges along the way- I actually use a couple of techniques I was taught when I led teams and did process improvement, although in a much scaled down way since it’s only me in the room now, thinking through the alternatives and the ‘If this, then what?’ and the ‘Why?' questions, with the occasional Venn diagram thrown in.

 I also don’t feel any need to share my writing until the point where I regard it as being a complete and finished work. When it’s done, I’m thrilled to put the book out into the world, let it receive reviews from readers as to their experience with the story, and move on to writing my next novel.

Part of this attitude of mine may be that since I’m not a person who plots in advance, the story unspools for me as I write it and therefore it’d be pointless to show the manuscript to anyone else prior to the work being complete because even I don’t always know all the ins and outs of the plot ahead. I do always know the ending, however.

Writing is kind of a fragile thing to me and the finished story is a strong enough edifice to withstand reader reviews and the opinions of others, whereas a story in progress doesn’t yet have that strength and if I got feedback that derailed or distracted me, I’d probably never finish the thing.

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Maybe I’m missing out on a whole set of wonderful, rich experiences by not gathering with other authors and exchanging ideas on WIP’s…but I can only do me and my Muse doesn’t think writing is a group activity. She shuts down and goes into silent running mode. I'm happy for people who flourish in that collaborative group environment and find writing partners who share and enhance each other's creative sparks but I know my own limits.

(Pretty much Rule One of Writing to me is that there's no one perfect or right way that everyone MUST write...thank goodness!)

I do give the book to my developmental editor once it’s complete and has gone through several edits by me. She provides very useful feedback and I have made changes or added or deleted things in response at times…but I’ve also chosen to ignore the inputs completely at other times where I’m happy with the story as it was. Having the dev editor’s comments certainly enables me to grow as a writer and to avoid repeating some mistakes as I go forward with more books.

I don’t do beta reading or critiquing for anyone else either with very rare exceptions that had unique circumstances. I can probably count those instances on one hand. Normally I refuse requests to beta read as kindly as I can.

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I’m a solitary person up there in my cold garret, writing away and telling my stories! (Well, okay sitting here in my cozy and warm apartment if you must know…)

Happy reading to everyone!

Who to Trust With Your Work - The Junior High Dance Edition

How do you know who to trust with your writing, especially early drafts and idea bouncing.

Yikes. This is such a process of trial and error. It's like those middle school and junior high dances where everyone's awkwardly hugging the edges of the room afraid to ask anyone to dance for fear of rejection or ridicule. Figuring out who you can trust with your well being as well as your heart is part of growing up as a human being. Figuring out who to trust with your writing is part of growing as a writer. And yes. The process is about as painful.

There's so much to learn.What's acceptable behavior. What isn't. What builds you up. What tears you down. That last is really hard because what's soul-killing to one writer will be nourishing for another. I will say this, though. When you find someone you can trust to give you the unvarnished truth about your work in a kind, constructive way, that person will be worth their weight in gold. It took me three dysfunctional groups before I fell by accident into one that taught me not only how to critique, it taught me how to take critique. The authors who welcomed me into that group had hundreds (not kidding) of books pubbed between them. I had zero, and I was still several years away from selling anything. These ladies ripped my manuscript to shreds. It would have been demoralizing except for the fact that they also painstakingly explained what was wrong and how I could fix it. Fantastic learning experience. Still, I could see where it might have been crushing had it come any earlier in my development.

I'll own up to mistakes made along the way, too. There were groups I joined simply because I could. They weren't a good match. Like trying to figure out dating, there's just no way to get out of it without hurting someone else or being hurt yourself. It's part of learning who your matches are. All you can do is try. And then try again. I'm lucky. Persistence paid off in spades. I have so many great critique and beta reading options - people writing and reading in my genre who know the market I'm writing for. Not a one of them is afraid to pull a punch because I'm tougher now. As my confidence has grown and as my trust in my crit readers has likewise grown, I want the bandages ripped off my story wounds. No candy coating. I know these people have my back and want my story to be the best it can be. So I want to get on with making my story better.

It took years to get here. It took some tears. I wish there was a formula for instantly detecting trustworthiness I could offer you. But I'm afraid this is all one grand experiment. Pretty much like the rest of life.