tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098646853427637031.post7648013776081412333..comments2022-12-26T21:03:03.295-05:00Comments on First Line: Musings from the Deskfirstlinefictionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07791334570848415998noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098646853427637031.post-85169846846134891472010-02-28T12:38:29.324-05:002010-02-28T12:38:29.324-05:00I'm not working on an outline - I rarely know ...I'm not working on an outline - I rarely know where I'm going when I start writing (I break all those how-to-write rules). I need to find the right "box" (structure) to put my story in - then I'll go about filling the box. When I wrote Last River Child is was originally told in first person, then after about 4 years or so of work I realized it couldn't be in first person and had to rewrite the whole damn thing in third person, which added a few more years to the project. It was worth it in the end because the book got published, but this time around I'm trying to avoid that mistake. You learn as you go, but every story is unique. Each time I face a blank page I feel like a novice again. <br /><br />Many thanks for suggesting Kercheval's book. I haven't read it so I'll look that up.<br /><br />And it's not stealing, Sam! You were "inspired"! I can't remember who said all of art is inspired by either nature or other art but I've always like that quote.firstlinefictionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07791334570848415998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9098646853427637031.post-51991010856949282862010-02-27T22:33:58.316-05:002010-02-27T22:33:58.316-05:00Great post! I do the same thing, and though I loa...Great post! I do the same thing, and though I loathe outlines on principle, I always wind up with one when I work on long-form fiction. <br /><br />I think it must be hard to write about structure without sounding formulaic, because I've never seen a book about it that didn't come off cheap or trite. I haven't seen them all, though, so surely one is out there somewhere. I do like Jesse Lee Kercheval's Building Fiction (I know--I reference her book all the time, but it really is terrific) for her conversations on structure, and you might enjoy it, too, because she asks a lot of the same questions you're asking. Her approach is more questions and possibilities than answers or how-tos, but then, that's why I like it.<br /><br />I tend to steal my structures from other sources, though that sometimes gets me into trouble. With the novel I'm revising now, the structure is based on a combination of the Egyptian Amduat and the Tibetan "book of the dead." I have an outline for a kind of vampire novel that's based on geography, on city names. My novella does the old "cycle of seasons" thing. Sometimes these structures wind up being more complicated than they're worth, but if I'm stealing them from nonliterary sources I can at least pretend they're not formulaic! :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com