Since publishing A Shadow in the Flames, I’ve been asked in a few interviews and such what tips I have for aspiring authors. Teaching is not a skill that comes easily to me, and as such, thinking of an answer to that question is often difficult, but as I was writing today, one thing did pop into my head:

Make detailed notes.

This is actually something I’m still trying to teach myself. I’ll be writing with certain things in mind and then I’ll be forced to stop writing and expect I’ll remember certain details later when I come back to it. When I do, I find that I’ve not retained it mentally as well as I thought (or worse, forgot there was a detail I was even trying to remember). It’s like an artist painting in front of a landscape, then going home and doing the rest from memory. This invariably leads to time lost as I either try to recall the details I’d conceived (and failed to remember), or go back and reread earlier chapters just reacquaint myself with something that I could have better kept track of with a written note or two.

That’s not to say I never make notes. I make a LOT of notes (character sketches, what’s going through someone’s mind at a certain time, neat little ideas, chapter outlines, etc.). Heck, I’ve got an entire page outlining how much and when to reveal about a certain character’s background. Even so, there are still occasional things that I think I can remember and consciously decide not to write down, or things it doesn’t occur to me to keep track of until later when I realize I need to know something.

Case in point: I’m working on finishing up the sequel to A Shadow in the Flames, and multiple plot threads have come together as one, resulting in a lot of characters running around. Certain characters know certain things (some know quite a lot, some only a little, and some only THINK they know a lot) and have certain competing agendas that dictate how much they want others to know. I’d been keeping track of who knows what and when in my head, and I suddenly realized today that I was starting to lose my grip as one character started treating another like he knew something he shouldn’t, and worse, downright contradicting something he’d told him a little bit before. Now I’m faced with rereading the previous fifty pages or so and taking notes on my own writing, just to be certain things are still fitting together properly. Not the end of the world, but it’ll eat up time.

I suppose one could argue that by not stopping to take notes as I wrote, I was allowing my creative momentum to continue unabated, but even so, I should have at least paused between chapters to take stock of where everyone was. I was already pausing to look at other things (so there was certainly time), but this one aspect snuck by me. Certainly fixable, but a wee bit of a pain. On the other hand, it’s a learning experience that’ll help to make me a better (and faster) writer, which should be good news for those of you who’ve asked that I hurry up so you can read more.

…And now I have something new to say when asked for advice! (It IS tempting to just tell them, “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” though.)

-Michael
www.michaelgmunz.com

When writing my novels, while I will shift poins of view between different characters from time to time, I generally stick to one POV per section. As such, when I do so I tend to get into the headspace of the character I’m writing so as to better present things from his or her point of view (what he or she sees, how she interprets different things, even the style of his or her–or its–thoughts, etc.).

Sometimes this is easy–especially if I’m writing from a character I particularly like. (Felix would be one of these.) Other times, it’s less so. Heck, there’s one character from my first book whose part I wound up toning down because he was such a pain in the ass to write. (That’d be Brian, if you’re curious. He’s such a putz.) It’s interesting, though, to see how I’m feeling after I finish writing certain characters. In the second book, for example, I’m occasionally writing from the point of view of Diomedes, and let me tell you, that’s a draining place to write in. It takes me a little while to switch gears back to myself, which I suppose might sound weird to some of you.

Right now, I’m working on writing a small section from a character who is SO alien to my own personality that it’s very, very slow going. Quite frankly it’s draining, both because it’s so hard to translate my own thoughts into this character’s to write the POV properly, and because the slow going makes me feel like I’m just plain going too slow. If I go to slow, I start feeling blocked, which only makes me go slower. It’s like a slog through the mud, really, and I have to work to make sure that READING it doesn’t feel like slogging, too. I don’t think it does, but making sure it comes out right is important to me. I suppose I should think of that part of the writing process as a 9-hour flight to a vacation spot. Sure, the flight (or the writing process) isn’t the most fun, but once it’s over, I’m in a spot I really want to be.

So what’s my point? I don’t really have one, I guess, but I wanted to take a break from trying to write this character’s point of view and switch back to my own brain, ’cause today I’m a lazy, lazy man. 🙂