Writings :)

Switching styles

March 4, 2017March 5, 2017 writingsLeave a comment

After revising the first 4 of 12 planned chapters this week, we’ve decided to redefine or reconfirm the current project as an experiment and a learning process.

We’ve split the 12 chaps into three distinct parts, to see how it works, and chapter 5-8 will then be part II of the story. By leaving the bigger plan and structure aside for a bit, the words are flowing so much more easily.

It’s also fitting for the story as the main person has gone on a long journey, and will now live in a very different context, with different impulses and evolve in new ways.

But there is a substantial difference between writing as a “blues jam”, building each sentence based upon the one before, not knowing where we’re going – compared to filling out a defined structure.

We’ll keep on writing.

Revising 4 chaps

March 2, 2017March 2, 2017 writingsLeave a comment

Today was a busy day with revision of the first 44 pages of the latest project with the working title “twelve months”.

For the first time we’ve been trying to write a short novel after a plan, and the results were a bit mixed compared to earlier projects. Previously we’ve written more improvised from chapter to chapter to see where the story goes, and according to what feels most natural from page to page, paragraph to paragraph.

To some surprise the improvised technique has worked quite well, while arranging the plot lines and developments for three main characters over twelve months (a year, hence the working title), made it feel somewhat stretched out and disengaged and at times, it lost some of the energetic drive or beat.

Where to go from here? We still have 8 chaps left to write but if we want to fill out the whole project according to the plan, we would have to adjust the whole story for the following chapters, to make it more interesting.

Another reflection was this: if things are too planned the language seems to suffer. It becomes more descriptive and action oriented, but loses the feeling of nice sentences that you’d like to read again, or that makes you feel good because of a certain poetic substance or some visual beauty with presence and calm.