scrivener

How do I write?

6 October 2019 by villia Leave a Comment

Someone asked what my process of writing novels was. Here is what I said. This how you manage to keep track of 60-90.000 words without getting lost.

I first come up with an idea. Why do I want to write this story. Without an idea, you won’t come very far and you’ll get lost. A novel without an idea or message won’t work, in my opinion.

Then I come up with place and time. My first two novels were Iceland, present time and Barcelona 1937. My third, still in progress, will take place in Amsterdam in 1939. Place and time is important as it dictated what kind of characters you have and how you bring your idea across to the reader.

The comes the fun part. Research. I dive into the world I’m about to create. For Blood and Rain, I read books and watched documentaries on the Spanish Civil War, for Mont Noir, I did the same for Amsterdam in the months leading up to the Second World War.

Only then do I create characters to tell the story.

When I have the place, time and major characters in place, I use Save the Cat or similar to roughly plot the story. This helps me avoid slow or boring mid-section and tie the end to the beginning.

Then I write the first draft. I don’t worry too much about lame dialogue or plot holes. If I see them, I make note of them and fix them in draft 2. Between draft 1 and 2, I look at what isn’t working and come up with solutions and implement those in draft 2.

It is not uncommon to see characters go their own way and that creates plot holes as they refuse to follow the outline. Therefore, draft 2 becomes a compromise between my initial plot and where the characters want to take it.

Draft 3 is where I polish things and tie them up. Only then do I let others read my story and give feedback. If needed, I use that to create the final and fourth draft.

This is ideal. I try to make it happen this way but this is writing and sometimes you have to alter your strategy.

As for chapters. I let the story define those and usually split things up into chapters after I’m well into draft 2.

The software I use has enormous influence on how I work. Stories are plotted and written in Scrivener. When they’re done, I export them into Apple Pages and create a layout for the printed books. Photoshop is used for the cover. Only nag is that most eBook vendors can’t work with Pages files or Word documents exported from Pages, so I have to borrow a Windows machine for a final export. Hopefully, I’ll find a solution to that soon.

Becoming an Author

20 February 2017 by villia Leave a Comment

An overnight success is years in the making. I’m not saying I’m a successful author. Not in the commercial sense. I may have sold a few hundred copies of Under the Black Sand, but that is not commercial success. Blood and Rain is coming in just under two weeks and it may sell 10 copies. I have no idea.

I firmly believe though that I am a successful author. I have finished two novels. It is an achievement in itself, even if nobody was ever to read them. Thousands, possibly millions, of people dream of writing a novel but never pull it off. Never finish the task. I have done it twice. But I wasn’t really planning to become an author. Never thought I had the patience and the stamina to pull it off. So where did it start?

As a child, I wrote simple stories. I wrote half a novel in my twenties. Life is a Bitch. It was simplistic, naive, ultimately abandoned. As I entered my thirties, I wrote a novel called Plastic. It’s not horrible, but it’s not very good. Abandoned again.

I attended film school shortly thereafter. Wrote and directed a short film, The Small Hours. It was simple, the story tight, a horrible and surprising ending. Maybe I should adapt it into a short story some day. 2006 saw me writing and directing another short. Black Sand. I made the mistake of trying to create an epic short. I misunderstood the format, tried to cramp too much into the small space. A 20 minute movie gives you too little time to tell an epic story and a 20 minute short is too long.

Under the Black Sand - movie screenplay — Under the Black Sand – movie screenplay

There was more to Black Sand than could be told in a short film or story. After resigning to the fact that the film had failed the simplicity test, I did what I should have done from the start. I fleshed it out and adapted it into a feature film screenplay. My first notes date from January 2007 and the first draft of the screenplay was finished in July that same year. By April 2008, I had replaced the opening scene with the “film noir” murder scene that opens the novel. As 2008 came to a close, I had a solid version of the movie on paper. In late summer and autumn 2008, a couple of production companies in Iceland had expressed interest and were waiting for me to deliver a final draft.

October 2008 changed everything. The economy crashed and funds dried up. Slowly, they all pulled out. There would be no money available to risk making this movie. They were struggling and bigger names obviously would take preference.

I kept working on the screenplay and the last version is dated 18 May 2009. As the production companies had done earlier, I abandoned the story.

Somewhere around the beginning of 2010, I met a film director. He read the screenplay, liked it, told me the dialogue was more natural than most Icelandic works before it and the story was deep, well developed and intriguing. However, he confirmed that there was no money. He’d just finished his debut feature, financed by himself and other non-industry people and companies. He told me to adapt my story into a novel. It was a story that needed to be read and would fit the novel format perfectly. And having a novel made the making of a movie more likely.

I wasn’t sure. I had never finished a novel and didn’t believe I could pull it off. But I didn’t have a choice if I wanted the story to be told.

First treatment for the novel was drafted in April 2010. I started writing it in Icelandic but gave up. Didn’t find myself in it, the language was getting in my way. I quickly switched to English and slaved on. I copied and pasted the screenplay into Apple Pages and wrote up the scenes, one by one. It was a turbulent time in my life and it took a while before the work was finished. Writing long form in a word processor is tough, but I was saved by a new app. I imported the draft into Scrivener in 2011 and the writing process took off. The first draft is dated 29 March 2012. April saw a new draft and on my birthday, 10 May 2012 I had a final draft.

I had a few paperbacks printed and a few people read it. A lot of useful feedback helped me shape the story in the weeks and months following that draft. One suggestion caused me a huge headache. Somewhere along the way, I had made the decision to move the setting of the story from Iceland to Scotland. I felt stupid writing an Icelandic story in English and I was fascinated by being able to include burning witches and castles. One of the readers asked why I’d done this. It’s an Icelandic story and should be set in Iceland.

I resisted. I’d spent years on this thing and really didn’t feel like going back to it. But he was right and I knew it. Deep down inside I knew I’d made a mistake when changing the setting. So I went back to work.

A year later, in May 2013, Under the Black Sand was completed and my first novel was published. It was a long time in the making, mainly due to the many detours, but I was happy with it. Some say it’s a fairly hard read, although a satisfying one. Others have completely lost themselves in it and absolutely loved it.

It’s a bit odd, but after the publishing, I mostly abandoned the writing “career”. Under the Black Sand sat on Amazon and trickled onto a few Kindles. A couple of reviews were posted and I didn’t notice them until they were pointed out to me. They inspired me to get back to writing.

Blood and Rain - paperback cover — Blood and Rain – paperback cover

A year after Under the Black Sand, I had a rough draft of a new novel. Blood and Rain was inspired by a short film from 2011 (I may want to adapt The Girl from Nowhere into a short story). I spent a good year writing, polishing and by late 2015, I was done. Again a few readers read it, gave good feedback and again one reader asked a critical question. A question that made me rethink the last 3-4 chapters. The final draft was ready in early January 2016.

Something happened on the day he died. I have been a huge Bowie fan for decades. When he died, in January 2016, I put Blood and Rain down and had no desire to continue. It took 10-11 months to get back to it. By January 2017, the final draft was done and ready to be published.

Now that we are on the eve of Blood and Rain’s publishing, I’m wondering what to do next. I have no aspirations to make a movie, but won’t object if someone wants to adapt one of my novels. But writing books has grabbed me by the horns and that’s where I’m going from here.

So, what’s next? I have no idea. I have an idea for a sequel to Blood and Rain. I have already outlined potential series based on Under the Blacks Sand. I have already written about 70% of a novella called Hunger City, a dystopian story set in the world David Bowie created on his Diamond Dogs album. And maybe I’ll do something entirely different.

One thing is certain. I will write a third novel. I am a successful writer, whether anyone notices or not.

Blood and Rain is available on 3 March 2017

Taking a story from Fragmented to Solid

5 February 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

Under the Black Sand started as a short film in 2006. It evolved into a screenplay in 2007 and was heavily rewritten and transformed by 2009. In 2012, a novel was completed, based on the whole thing. Although the few people that go to read it were enthusiastic, it wasn’t ready for publishing. There were too many loose ends, leftovers from the original short film. I wasn’t happy with it. I’m still not.

But it’s getting there. I was able to finish the novel after I installed Scrivener. Now, I am able to make it the best it can be, because of the way the software breaks the manuscript up in small scenes.

In the original screenplay and novel, Peter, the protagonist, was hell bent on building a new suburb. He defied and fought the city authorities and this caused all kinds of twists ad troubles. But it somehow didn’t click with the main story. It was a nice way to add drama and suspense, but it was like a second story. It didn’t seem to have enough to do with his relationship with the elusive Emily. Who she was and what lay buried under the black sand.

I needed to rethink and refocus the whole work. An impossible task in an ordinary word processor. Scrivener made it relatively easy. I made notes for each scene. What happens here and why? How does it add to the story? How does it drive it forward? How does it connect? And if it doesn’t, will it be removed or rewritten completely?

Much work has yet to be done, but with Scrivener, the road ahead is relatively clear. The final work is in focus.

The Glorious Problems of Rewriting

3 February 2013 by villia Leave a Comment

After the great eruption in 1783, everything was gone. The sky had turned dark and they hadn’t seen the sun for weeks. Black ash and lava covered their fields and the tiny cottage was buried underneath. The animals were all dead. Many of the people the knew were dead. The land was dead. Black, like an eternal night in hell.

The church doors were locked, but hell invaded through the windows. The priest said his prayers, his voice rising above the volcano and the rain. As the little church shook with the earth, they all embraced death. But death wouldn’t come. Not today. The lava stopped just before it reached them. They had been spared.

But the eruption continued for months. The rain burned the skin and ground. Livestock died, the winter was cold, dark and bitter.

The above text is brand new. It was not a part of the novel I intended to publish. It is now, and it plays a major role in the development of the whole thing. Oh, and the mass described really took place and the lava stopped just a few meters away.

As I’ve said before, Under the Black Sand is being completely rewritten. The original screenplay had the story play out in Iceland. When I wrote the novel in English, I moved it to the UK. I beefed up the back story be making Peter a nineteenth century industrialist. Now that the story is back where it always belonged, in Iceland, massive rewriting and rethinking was necessary. Iceland had no industrial revolution until after the second world war. We never had railways to speak of. Peter needed something else to catapult him from a poor peasant to a business prodigy.

Instead of an incident with a laird, the earth itself changed the course of history. A previously unknown volcano erupted in June 1783. It would go on for eight months and produce the greatest lava flow on earth since the end of the last ice age. It devastated farmland, leaving 50% of cattle, 60% of horses and 80% of sheep dead. Famine followed, killing 10.000 people, almost a quarter of the country’s population. Climate was altered for two years. Fjords froze solid and what crops that survived the fluoride, failed because of harsh weather.

Introducing this turning point to the story is a major operation. Many scenes need major revisions, while some have to be cut altogether. I did not write this post to plug a software, but I have to say that without Scrivener, I probably would have given up on the whole thing. Without the overview and structured workflow, such a massive rewrite would be all but impossible.

So there you have it. What would have become a tedious and probably impossible task, is now fun. The new story flows and excites me. No small feat after such a long writing process.

Killing Your Darlings

29 August 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

One of the most painful things writers must do it killing the darlings. The scenes they worked to perfection. They may be inspired, beautiful, full of meaning. They may be the greatest prose you ever wrote. But no matter how special they are, if they don’t serve the story, they must die.

Under the Black Sand was originally written as an Icelandic screenplay. After the financial crash in 2008, little money was available for unknown filmmakers. A filmmaking friend suggested I write it up as a novel. It would be a work in its own right, unlike a screenplay, and if successfully executed, a producer might show interest and an open wallet.

The novel was written in English. It wasn’t just a straightforward translation though. It became an English story, rooted in Victorian Great Britain. It merged the Viking roots and the industrialism of modern England and Scotland.

I was pretty satisfied with the story. Happy enough to have five copies printed as paperbacks and read by people I trusted would not hesitate to tell me if it was shite.
The reviews were positive. The story was strong and worthy of publishing. One comment bothered me though. Why did I change the story from the original idea? Why have it take place in the UK, rather than Iceland? What is wrong with the Nordic countries and Scandinavia?

After thinking about it long and hard, I decided to rewrite the whole thing. Move it back to it’s roots. Back to Iceland. It will delay the completion considerably, but so be it. The modern scenes will be fairly simple. Both countries are modern societies and the changes will be subtle. The nineteenth century scenes will be vastly different. There were no railroads in Iceland. Very few mansions. Industrialists were unheard of. It was a rural society.

Scenes like the one below will have to be completely turned on their heads or cut completely. But that is the reality of writing. No matter what you think of the scene, if it has to go, it goes.

And so this scene will not be in the final version.

~ 1866 ~

The new railway station was making a real progress. It would be the most glorious thing he had ever created. He would be a hero to the common man. It was his crowning achievement. Peter Wollard, industrialist. Pioneer. Yet, it was the last thing on his mind. A vanity project, designed to make the humble man feel like he had conquered nature, that he had finally beaten the world into submission. Their new home was also coming along nicely. Only the roof needed to be fitted and the interior was being designed to their specifications. And yet it was no more than a hollow shell, a place to shelter them from the rain and wind. Any house would have done, but they had decided to build themselves a palace. A glorious place without a soul. Or so it felt, now that she was gone.
‘We will name the house in her honour’, he had said and Emily had squeezed his hand.
Their projects were the envy of all that had seen them. The two people standing here were the symbols of the new world. The rare breed that had made immense wealth, and still earned the respect of the people that worked for them. But nobody was working today. The hammers lay unused, the machinery was silent and the men were lined orderly behind the two people. The workers shared their pain.

The funeral was beautiful, but it paled when compared to the child that lay in the small coffin. They had known. It was inevitable. All the money in the world couldn’t prevent what would happen. They blamed themselves. They had used the stones, they had seen it coming. A few weeks after her first birthday, they had found the stones and little Florence was doomed. They had played with her, taught her to walk and talk and pretended that she would use her newly learned skills someday, that they would see her grow up to be a beautiful young woman. Peter would give his daughter away to a handsome young man and enjoy being a grandfather. She would never grow to be a woman and every day would remind them. Every time they saw her, ever smile, every tear could be her last.
She was doomed and they knew it. The light drizzle falling on his shiny hat could have been burning sun or pouring rain. They wouldn’t have noticed. All they saw was the small coffin as it disappeared into the grave. The man and the woman had brought her into this world and sentenced her to death.

Now they wished they’d never found the stones. How could they have known? How could destiny be so cruel?

Florence Woollard

1864-1866

Eternity lasts but a moment

This post, originally from 23 July 2012, was recreated on 6 January 2016, after my site got deleted as explained here.

Scrivener

21 August 2012 by villia Leave a Comment

I shouldn’t be writing this post. I should be working on the novel. But Scrivener has given me the chance to do both.

Under the Black Sand is as good as complete. I am going through it, picking up inconsistencies and typos. Nothing major, or so I though. But I did come across a sequence that wasn’t making much sense. It used to, in a much earlier draft, but now that I have added and edited scenes, this was out of place. I selected the scenes, using Cmd-click so that I could leave one scene in place. I then dragged the selection to chapter two, where the scenes make much more sense. This took a few seconds. I know the story and I could see, at a glance, where the selection would fit. Had I been using Word, Pages or any other linear – one block – editor, this would have taken much longer. In fact, I would probably still be copying and pasting. So, Scrivener has allowed me to work on the novel and blog about it.

Every once a while, you come across something that makes your life easier. Switching to a Mac in 2004 was such a moment. Learning video editing on Final Cut Pro was another. Heck, my first car did the same for me. It helped me do things faster and more efficiently.
Discovering Scrievener did that as well. My cluttered and messy ideas made sense. I finished the first draft of a novel. No small feat for someone that has the attention span of a fruit fly. It says something that when I set my system up from scratch recently, Scrivener was one of the first things to be installed. A computer with no Scrivener on it is a crippled computer.

Thanks for creating something special.

This post, originally from 23 July 2012, was recreated on 6 January 2016, after my site got deleted as explained here.