22 index cards

My writing app of choice, Scrivener, lets you create virtual index cards to plot. Here’s a glimpse at some of the 22 I have that currently hold the plot for (probably) issues 16-18 of Spider-Girl. The discipline of describing the plot chunks in such a small space is really handy, I find.

Just wanted to share.

Finished, and boy did that hurt.

Another issue done. Well, ‘done’ in the sense that all the words I wanted to put into it (13,059 of them, as it happens) are in it. That said, I haven’t re-read it yet for sense or coherency. So sorry, faithful reader – no release today. But soon. By Tuesday, so I can say I’m on bi-weekly schedule, kind of.

As you might have guessed from the post title, this one took a while to finish. For some reason the last scene, a scene that would normally be gravy (a transformation) just took forever to do. I’m not entirely sure why. It might be because I was trying to give it a sense of importance that it didn’t deserve. That’s kind of hard to gauge though; after all, the transformation bits are generally why you’re reading, so I’d imagine your reaction is probably “How could it not be important?”

Eh, I guess the point is when you feel like you’ve written this sort of thing every single different way you can think of, some days you just want to write “Then they got changed into a different outfit and went on their way”. It’s not as if I have actors or actresses in front of me giving me visual stimulation… instead it’s all in my head, and I’ve got to make them do interesting things. Otherwise they just sit around with blank looks.

Anyway, it is done, and in the last few lines I threw a wrench in my own plot because I thought it’d be fun. We’ll see… Future Ghostly might end up cursing my present self. (See what I meant about foreshadowing and plotting?)

Right. I feel like rambling on, so I think I’ll go shoot some posts into the future to make it look like I never leave the keyboard. Thanks for all the recent comments by the way people; I appreciate it a hell of a lot, especially when I’m forcing myself to try and write one more line.

The problems with plotting

I like to plot, but simultaneously, I hate to plot. Let me try and explain.

Before I embark on any long piece of writing – erm, which will be all of them, I guess – I like to try and get some sort of plot written down. That way I have some sort of idea where things are going. Essentially, it’s an insurance policy. If I’m sitting at the keyboard wondering where to go next, I can look at the plot and go “Okay, that’s the objective – now I just have to get there”.

This is especially important in serialised fiction (ie Spider-Girl), as if you have no idea where things might be going to, you can’t throw in clues or foreshadowing – and believe me, I like to do that where I can. I also really, really want internal consistency in any series; the world needs to make sense, even if it’s a fantastic one, and there needs to be continuity. (That I can later retcon. Joke for the comics fans.)

Having said this, in the process of writing, I frequently go off-plot. In other words, the plot changes as I write it, usually because I have some sort of brainwave that is just too good to ignore. When that happens I usually end up re-writing my plot notes to accommodate the idea, just so I can basically tell myself the story and make sure it all makes sense. (Believe me, it often doesn’t. I’ve rewritten the plot for the Spider-Girl Crossover arc about five times since the first draft. Looking at those original notes, there are plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.)

So I like to have the roadmap, I like to have the plot written down. It can be nightmarish to actually create that plot though, hence my hating to plot, too. Sometimes I will just not have any idea where the plot needs to go, or worse, I have an idea but it just seems too lame for words. Even worse than that, sometimes I have a plot and it’s written down and… it still sucks.

This is the worse situation a still-to-be-written story can find itself in, because honestly, once I have the skeleton of a plot down I find it hard to throw that away. Why? Because the process is so tough. Believe it or not, getting ideas is easy (Especially in this ‘genre’ where essentially all I’m doing is writing down fantasies…). It’s having those ideas make sense, and putting them into a story where the characters act in a (reasonably) believable manner, that’s the hard part.

Sometimes, the really damn hard part. This is what leads to having loads of half-finished stories, or stories that are plotted but aren’t written. In the former case, I usually haven’t plotted to the conclusion in a way I like. The latter, I don’t like the plot enough to write it – or I haven’t plotted to the end, either.

Like opposable thumbs being what separates man from animal, I think plotting is what separates ‘erotic fiction’ from just ‘porn’. While I often jokingly refer to my writing as porn (Hey there, Mr. High Self-Esteem!) in reality it’s just fiction… that happens to be erotic in a very specific way. Whereas your average porn movie has zero plot (unless you call ‘will the studly handyman fix the broken appliance’ a plot) I like to think that everything I write has a definite plot, hopefully with decent dramatic tension, some character development and yeah, plenty of eroticism.

And that, I hope, is why it’s worth reading what I write. That and you getting off, naturally. (Just couldn’t exit without a dick joke, could I….)

Ten minutes in a hotel room

Call this a writing exercise if you like; call it stream of consciousness, call it a warm up. Here’s ten minutes worth of waffle from a hotel room. I’m away on business, and as often happens in these situations, the siren’s song of an empty hotel room, an active internet connection and time on my hands leads me to want to do one thing: write.

I have a weird thing about hotel rooms, and being alone in them far from home. They bring out this guy, the guy I am now, the alternative writing persona who’s not that far removed from “randy Pan, the Goat Boy” as Bill Hicks would say. I’ve written some of my best stuff in hotel rooms, to be honest, although one problem I definitely do have is starting stuff in environments like this and not finishing. Not a good habit.

I don’t know what it is, but I’ll struggle to define it. It’s something about the delicious anonymity of hotels, the idea that anyone could be here, that anything could happen. You could do anything in these situations and the likelihood is no-one would ever find out. I should stress it’s never, ever happened to me, at least not since I’ve been married. I’ve had a couple of intimate encounters in hotel rooms, and only one of which I can recall being particularly fun… but they were all in my ‘wild’ and ‘carefree’ single days.

These days, I tend to confine myself to wild and carefree writing. Here, undistracted by anything else, I get some of my best ideas down, my best work. I think it’s partially just because of the inherent romanticism (for me) in the idea of being a writer at work in some hotel room. There are plenty of examples of writers who have holed themselves up in hotels to do their work, so many in fact that there are well known fictional examples too (The Shining, anyone?). We like the idea of being focused. No past, no future, just the present – the keyboard, the screen (or paper) and The Writing.

Three minutes left. So what’s it going to be tonight? I don’t know. First of all I think I’ll get down some of the ideas I have had rattling around my head in the past couple of days. A refinement of an old idea, a sort of riff on Charlie’s Angels. Something involving twins, and probably, trains. Something else that just came to me involving a hotel – duh. When those are noted (Never, ever let go of an idea, folks… you never know when you’ll need ‘em) I’ll strive to work on something in progress. Inch towards completion.

Dying seconds. Hope you’ve enjoyed recent stuff, I really appreciate all the comments; feel free to keep ‘em coming. I’ll be releasing something else next, something not Spider-Girl; there, I said it. We’ll see.

Right. Off to it.

At long bloody last

Just wrote the last few words for issue #12 of BBTSSG, as you might want to call it. FI-NA-LLY.

I tell you, this issue has been an absolute bitch to finish. Even though from the looks of things it ‘just’ took me a month or so to write, it felt waaaay longer to me. The whole thing seemed to move along in fits and starts, and I mean literally – some nights I’d sit for two hours and write two paragraphs. First I didn’t feel like the issue had enough, well, eroticism in it. Then, after I figured that out, I realised I had to go back and rewrite something in issue #11 that changed quite a few things in issue #12. Gaaawwwwwdddd! With all that crap in my head it’s a miracle I can come up with new ideas.

Oy. So where does this leave me?

Well first of all, my early plans to keep at least a ‘clear arc’ between whatever I’m currently writing, and whatever I’m currently releasing, are shot to hell.

That’s because right now, there’s no bloody way I can dive into issue #13 and beyond – which starts the next big arc, codenamed ‘Crossover‘. (The way I was previously planning, I’d finish ‘Crossover’ before I’d even release the arc I just finished, which covers issues #9-12.) I can’t do that though. For one thing, I have no idea where ‘Crossover’ is going, precisely. It’s like I can see the target but I need to hit the bullseye. I need to re-plot the whole thing, figure out what the high points are, and hopefully get a handle on how many issues it might end up being. (Because one thing I am going to keep doing is completing arcs before I release them. If – God forbid – I give up on the series entirely, I don’t want to do it in the middle of a half-released arc. I’m not that cruel….)

More importantly, right now, I’m just plain tired of writing this series. Issue #12 took a lot out of me – this arc as a whole, in fact. I still love the characters, love where they’re going, but it’s starting to feel a little same-y. The plot of ‘Crossover’ should freshen things up a bit, but I need a break, to let me recharge the batteries, get enthused for it again… so that it feels fresh when I write it.

So what about that break. Well, I have a couple of other things on the go. I have an old, half-completed story (called ‘Love Hotel‘) which I dusted off recently and might well try and complete; it’s maybe a third, perhaps half-finished, and after some intensive plotting sessions with a fellow author recently I know what I need to do to finish it off. It’s a ’straight’ (ie, no superheroes!), one-off story too… and pretty damn hardcore. So it’d be a real change of pace for me right now.

Second, I do have that Susan Storm mini-series idea… but I’d need to knuckle down and plot that a bit more carefully. I also now know, having finished issue #12, that I’d probably have to write issue #13 before I can get to it. That’s because…

… issue #12 ended up being looooong. For the record, it’s the biggest issue to date; over 12,000 words in total. Partially that’s because I added all that ‘extra sauce‘ to it (Yeah, ’slight twist’, my ass), and partially it’s because there was a lot of plot to get in. And there was actually even more to fit into it in the original synopsis. So that stuff, which is an essential bridge to the Susan Storm mini, will now have to go in issue #13. Which as I write this, I’m starting to think might have to be a standalone issue. Followed by the mini. Oh God, I’m rambling like a maniac.

Alright, one more thing and out. The nice coda to all this is my word count. Issue #12 takes me to over 100,000 words written for the series so far; that’s the size of a decent novel. Pretty cool.

Now click an ad and get outta here. Issue #9 will be out before the week’s over. Promise.

Rewriting ripples

Issues #11 and #12 of Spider-Girl dive into her family history in a big way, so I did some research early on… although that mostly consisted of reading early Amazing Spider-Man issues.

Turns out though, thanks to the industrious Kurt Busiek, I had some more history to read about. See, Busiek wrote a series called Untold Tales of Spider-Man, which basically ‘filled in the gaps’ in the really early issues of Amazing, adding extra detail. Detail’s great, don’t get me wrong, but recently I found some details that basically meant something I’d already written… really needed to get re-written.

I put it off for a while but this morning decided I wouldn’t be able to keep writing issue #12 until I’d re-written the portion of issue #11 that was affected by this history change. Y’see, this is a fairly crucial part of the plot, and I knew when I made these changes it’d affect a lot of other stuff; like chucking a rock into a pond and watching the ripples. Sure enough, as I rewrote the one scene and started skimming through the rest of the issue, I began tinkering with lines, changing reactions and so on.

That process is going to have to continue with issue #12, which I’m motoring along on now. The good news is that this change gives me a potential plotline which might be interesting – and might lead to Betty doing something constructive with that Peter Parker mask she found….

A peek at my folders

As I may or may not have mentioned before, I’m using Google Docs & Spreadsheets to write with now. I like it a lot, because it lets me write with all the tools I generally need (word count, spell check, etc) and generates simple files when I’m done. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good for a free web app. (Biggest limitation is, of course, that it’s on the web – but I haven’t had much need to do offline writing for a while.)

Today Google updated Docs & Spreadsheets with a new look, which was a pretty big surprise when I logged in, considering I’ve been looking at the same interface for over six months, I think. So when I saw the new layout I thought I’d give you a peek at what I see every day when I sit down to write – click to make big:

Yeah, I obscured some stuff in there. C’mon, you’re not the kind of kid who opened their presents before Christmas morning, are ya? No, of course you’re not… just keeping a few things hidden before they’re ready to be revealed. Had to rename a few folders too – ain’t I a stinker?

Alright, off to bed. I have a feeling I’ll be turning over the Brant family tree in my head a few times before I drift off.

Punching it up… and breaking 10k

So yesterday I told you a little bit about a scene I’d written for issue #11 that unexpectedly went to an even higher rating on the ol’ “How Turned On Is Ghostly While Writing This” scale. (Said scale starts at 1 – A Slight Quickening Of The Pulse, to 10 – Can’t Actually Finish Writing This, Must Take Care Of Business.)

Anyway, overnight and this morning I was pondering over said scene, patting myself on the back a bit, reliving it in the glorious Technicolor, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround environment that is my mind. And I realised there was something missing.

There’s a lesson here, fellow writers: never assume because a scene seems great at first pass, that it’s as great as it can be. (Or, to repeat myself: writing is rewriting.)

There was indeed something missing… it was a little peek at our protagonist’s inner feelings. (I’m not spoiling anything by saying it was Betty.) I needed to know a bit more about what she was feeling, and more importantly, why she was feeling it. Y’see, overnight one tiny line of dialogue – the one that got me so hot and bothered – had also revealed a simply delicious new plotline. Said plotline manages to accomplish several different things that I’ve wanted to do in the series, and even introduces a whole bunch of new, entirely kinky stuff. In other words, I really want to write it. (And why is it, exactly, that I’m always jonesing to write the arc after the one that’s up next? Hmmm. Absence make the GW lust stronger….)

Anyway, I needed that extra detail to lift this scene up, to make it more important in the grand scheme of things. Y’see, even though this scene takes place in issue #11, you’ll look back on it from about issue #22 or so and go “Aaah… I can see where this all started.” I’m planting seeds.

So today, with that thought in my mind, I went back to edit said scene, and punch it up a little. I wanted to improve it. And I did, I feel. I sweated over every line, every comma, every word… reading, re-reading, gauging my own reaction as it slowly moved along The Scale to an 8, a 9… an oh me oh my. I thought it couldn’t get any better.

But get this: suddenly, it did. At the end of the scene, in a throwaway moment which I’d already written in a hurry to wrap the issue up, a tiny little thought occurred to my deviant mind. “What if she does that before she does that… oh yes. Oh, yes.” That little moment suddenly became a much larger moment, and lifted the ending of the story another notch. To a 9, no doubt in my mind… although of course, your mileage may (probably will) vary.

A great day for the writing, then. Another little milestone was passed, too, although it’s not one I’m boasting about. With the additions I made today (about 500 words or so), Spider-Girl Issue #11 just became the first issue to break the 10,000 word mark. This isn’t exactly surprising to me… the issues have been climbing in words ever since issue #1, as I get more comfortable with the characters and want to explore things more thoroughly. On top of that, to be honest, the more scenes like the ones I just described I put in, the more the word count rises. Detail, detail, detail… that’s what it’s all about.

Anyway, enough self-congratulation. I imagine it must drive a few of you crazy to read this stuff. Sorry! Just rest assured… it’s all coming to you sooner or later.

Time for a cold shower

Wow. It’s always, always just wonderful when a story takes an unexpected turn and what results is so much better than what you planned.

I just finished Spider-Girl issue #11, and I was working in that whole issue towards a particular scene – yes, a transformation scene. I’d been working out in my head specific ‘beats’, specific moments that I wanted to do, but honestly with these sorts of things I just tend to let it happen, and let the writing flow. All that bollocks.

However, what I’ve found to my utter amazement several times now is that right in the middle of those scenes… I’ll figure something out that’s so, so much better than what I thought. Suffice to say in the scene that I just wrote, an incredibly kinky (Well, to my mind) idea suddenly jumped into the middle of it and made it soooo much sexier. Mmmmm… hmmm.

Sorry it’ll be a while before you see it. But hey, look on the bright side; as I like to keep a respectable distance between issues I’ve released and issues I’ve finished, putting the ‘finished’ tag on issue #11 means you’re that much closer to issue #7. Which I don’t think y’all are gonna see coming….

Oh – happy Memorial Day if you’re in the US. And happy, er… wet Bank Holiday if you’re here in the UK. A perfect day to stay at home and read some dirty fiction.

B, B and B

What is it, three days since I said this:

‘try not to have two characters with the first initial’

.. and here I am this morning writing about three characters, all with the initial letter of ‘B’. Dammit.

Worst of it is, they’re all characters from Spider-Man history, so I want to keep them all named the same. And one of them has a surname beginning with B so I can’t even cheat by calling them by their second name!

Damn you Stan Lee and your easy to remember alliterative names. Damn you all to hell!!!