RoW80 Progress: A Few Revisions Already

Progress in this first week has been a bit mixed. Even in the first day, when excitement was still running high, I only managed to hit a few of my goals. On my best day I still couldn’t reach all of those goals. I’m starting to think that I may have set myself too many goals. I’m trying to do so much that I’m not doing anything. I’m spreading myself thin and not achieving anything as a result. And then on Friday I kind of burned out and haven’t tried to complete my goals since. Most of my goals were aimed at building a work habit and I have managed to create a bit of a work habit. More importantly I’ve actually been waking up earlier and doing more than I was doing before. I’ve also been tracking how I spend my time and making sure that I do daily to do lists and a weekly to do list. But I haven’t reached my goals though. So let’s see how I did do;

Post one blog post other than a ROW80 update a week

I did hit this goal. On Wednesday instead of creating a check in post I began a new blog series about the three act structure. I’m pleased that I managed to reach this goal as it was one of the most important goals that I wanted to complete. The lack of content on my blog lately has been annoying and worrying me so the fact that I’m finally getting some new content up is encouraging. In fact I’ve already begun writing my post for next week.

Spend 30 minutes on social media each day

I’ve been doing a little bit of social media each day, ranging from comments on the LinkedIn Groups that I’m a member in, to spending time on Twitter and taking part in conversations there, to visiting a bunch of blogs from the other RoW80 participants and leaving comments. I may not have been spending 30 minutes each day doing it but I’ve been doing little bits and pieces each day which is a great start. I want to spend more time doing social media so I’m keeping this goal up.

Spend 4 hours each day doing two different creative activities

4 hours a day is actually quite a lot to be spending on creative activities. I’ve done two different creative activities most days but I’ve not spent 4 hours doing it. Mostly I’ve spent a half an hour at most on each activity. While I could get a lot done in 2 hours of writing it’s difficult to stay focused entirely on one thing for that long. I’m going to change this goal or rather these two goals a little to make sure that I actually have a slight chance of reaching them.

New Goal: Spend 2 hours each day doing two different creative activities.

The Two Work Goals

Apply for 3 jobs each day on the freelancing websites I use
Start and try for completion of projects on the order dayI’ve applied for a few jobs but they don’t update as often as they’d need to for me to apply to new jobs each job. For the first few days I was able to apply to three jobs each day but as the days passed and new jobs didn’t come up I had to stop. And when it came to the job completion... well I need to be hired for jobs to try and complete them. So I’m scrapping the application goal. It’s unnecessary and something that I do anyway. But the starting and completing on the first day is one that I will keep and aim for when I get hired again.

As I’ve been writing this I’ve been looking at my diary, trying to see where I went wrong. And then I realised that I was still trying to do too much on top of my goals. I had the RoW80 goals to reach towards and then I had weekly goals on top of that which were in no way linked to the RoW80 goals. I need to tie the goals in to each other, have a list of weekly goals that are what I needed to work towards as part of my RoW80 goals. For instance I can list the blog post that I need to write as the other blog post each week. I can list the two different projects I want to work on each day within my daily to do lists as part of my creative work each day. Once I’ve got those specific goals that link to RoW80 then I can include a couple of other goals to work towards.

Overall this week has been a bit disappointing but there have been a few successes. Also I’ve made a couple of friends through commenting on other blogs and taking part in conversations on Twitter. This is, in my book, a success. Even with the goal revisions this week has been ok. Let’s hope that next week will turn out better.

The Three Act Structure: An Introduction

Everyone’s heard of the Three Act Structure in some form or other. Whether it’s an in depth look or the kind of information you learn as a kid the basics of the three act structure are simple;

• Beginning
• Middle
• End

No muss, no fuss, bada-bing, bada-boom. As you get older, read more, learn more, delve deeper into the realms of writing you learn a lot more about it. Some people have written entire books on the subject in fact, going so in depth that it can give me a headache. They’re also a popular topic for writers to, guess what, blog about! And yes, I have just apparently jumped on that band wagon. What you have to remember when I do these sorts of posts is that they’re not so much instructional, although they can be taken as such, but they’re mostly a way for me to work out how I understand a certain aspect of writing.

What Is the Three Act Structure All About?

It’s a way of structuring your story, whichever form that you want to write in, whether it’s a novel, novella, novelette or a short story. It’s essentially a way of honing down the direction your main plot line goes and remembering what you’re writing towards. You can see how the action builds and releases and builds and releases, keeping that steady flow of tension and action that keeps readers turning the page as they go.

The Three Act Structure at its simplest
Image from Wikipedia

Each Act serves a purpose, a role, in the overall story as well as having their own story in a sense. Each Act needs to be there in order for the story to flow. Each Act has its own flow of tension, gradually building and releasing as the story moves forward and hopefully pulling the reader along with it. It’s simple really, when you step back and don’t over think. Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. Beginning, middle, end. Introduction, build up, climax. But those are the broad terms, the rough one word descriptions that give you only a vague idea of what goes in each, what role each Act poses. I will admit that there are a lot of videos out there, a lot of books, a lot of blog posts, that all boil down the Three Act Structure into something that works for that particular writer. One style doesn’t work for everyone. Like everything in life and in writing, what works for one person may not work for another. But those are the basics, the minimum amount of what you need to know about the Three Act Structure if you just want the general guideline.

But Why Do You Love the Three Act Structure So Much Nicole?

For me the three act structure is wonderful. Even with just filling in the basic stuff you can get an idea of where the story is going. You can go as in depth as you like or stay very vague. Personally I like to go in depth, filling in quite a lot of detail as I go. Sometimes this backfires on me but more often than not it’s a way for me to learn a lot about the story. I use it as a guide line, a way of seeing exactly what I’m writing. It’s the road map to the story. As long as I have something down, a little plot point for each Act then I can’t really go wrong. I might go on veering tangents but I can always find my way back to the story. Especially if I team it up with the logline. Sometimes I use the Three Act Structure when I’m pantsing a story, marking off plot points that I want to include and writing towards them while I make up most of what happens off the top of my head.

A Little bit more complicated screen writing version
Also from the Wikipedia page on Structure

What About Other Structures?

There are a lot of different variations of the Three Act Structure out there, ways of looking at how to structure your three acts. Some are incredibly detailed, encouraging you to plot out 9 different points of action in each Act. Others are very basic, asking for just 3 points of action. Me, I like to use a nice round 5 points of action for each Act, 5 major plot points that have to happen in order for the story to make sense and continue moving. Other minor stuff might appear as I write that can be taken out or moved around but those five plot points have to stay there and rarely can be moved around. If the story is a house then the plot points are load baring walls. You could build without them or put them in the wrong place, but it wouldn’t be long before the walls crumbled around you and you found your bathtub in the kitchen.

And the really complicated version
From the Go Teen Writers blog

So What Next?

I was going to go into a lot more detail on this post, way more than I have already but then I noticed that what initially began as the introduction, that little bit before I began to talk about each Act properly, had turned into a post all of its own. I don’t want to be one of those bloggers that puts up wall after wall of text, I’m trying to get out of that habit. To be fair I should have guessed about how big this post was going to get when I planned it out on paper. There’s no way that I’m going to keep two sides of A4 short enough for a single blog post. So that’s where the new series comes in. Three Acts means three posts, each one about a different act. And more importantly I’m going to start writing them before I’ve even posted this one so keep an eye out for the other three over the next few days/weeks (I haven’t decided on a schedule yet) and you can see how I see the Three Act Structure and how I approach it when writing.

RoW80 Round 3; My Goals for the Round

I haven’t taken part in A Round of Words in 80 Days for about a year. I’ve been focused on other stuff and for a while thought that I couldn’t make a living from my writing. I still can’t yet, but I’m getting there. Things go a little slowly from time to time and at the moment I’m in one of those ebbs. It happens. So I figured that I use the time that I have, use this free time that is making me so very, very bored, and take part in RoW80 once more. Maybe this way I can improve my work ethic and finally use the time that I have in the best way possible. So... on to the goals;

Marketing

•          Post one blog post other than a ROW80 update a week.I’ve been getting a bit down lately, not really knowing what to post about and my blog’s just sitting there on the net with nothing new coming up. It’s important to create new content regularly, it draws in readers and it gives me practice for writing books. I want to post more, create a more regular schedule and have someone to answer to when I don’t update. As a result I’ve sat down and thought up a series of different blog posts that I can put up. They’re all outlined, roughly, now I just need to write them, edit them and then schedule them. I’m not going to do it all at once though, I’m hoping to work on one post each week and then, if I somehow manage to get ahead of myself I have that buffer in place and I can pick up the schedule a little more.
•          Spend 30 minutes on social media each day.Social media is a powerful thing, just look at the way tweets go viral or facebook groups can actually prompt massive social change. If I want to get smart, get my name out there and build a readership and client base I need to start using them all. More importantly I need to start using them properly, like so many ‘marketing gurus’ suggest. I joined LinkedIn a while ago, Twitter I use fairly regularly and Facebook kind of just sits there, the page I created not even live yet. Right now I’ve signed up to a bunch of groups on LinkedIn but I’m not using them at all. So with this goal I want to actually start posting in the groups, creating networks and hopefully friendships and just get the best that I can out of what I have available. I want to get my facebook page finished and going live. I want to build up followers on Twitter, the real way, by making connections and having conversations. Doing a little something on these social media sites each day, even just 30 minutes can help with all of this.

Creativity

•         Spend 4 hours a day doing 2 different creative activities not related to work.I have all of these ideas, all of these things that I want to do and I’m just not using the time to do them properly. I want to improve my time management, improve my output level. If I ever want to be the prolific author that I think I can be then I need to actually start writing. So I need to spend time doing something creative of some sort every day, no matter if it’s actually creating new words, editing and revising old ones or planning and outlining an entirely new story. I just need to do something and take some of these projects that I’ve had sitting in my head and on my desk for so long, and actually finish them at last.

I say four hours because I keep finding myself in slow mode with work. If I can use the time that I have free to do two different activities it’s at least something productive, I’m not sat watching videos on YouTube and getting bored out of my mind. More importantly it doesn’t have to be four straight hours, I can spread them out over the day, taking half an hour between different work projects and doing something of my own. Hopping between projects for me is fun, it keeps my brain going and I always learn something new. Really though, it’s all about increasing my output and creating a shiny new work ethic that can help me reach my dreams.

Work

•          Apply for 3 jobs each day on the freelancing websites I use.I keep waiting too long between jobs, finding myself bored, as I am right now, and I start to worry as I slowly watch my savings trickle away into nothing. Having these big gaps between jobs, between projects means that I fall out of the habit of writing each day, I fall out of the habit of finishing projects quickly and with quality. Regular applications for jobs, even if they don’t pan out can help me keep that work ethic going, that habit going. At least if I’m applying for the jobs, even if I don’t get them, I still know that I’m trying. And if I do get jobs I can have a queue of them, more and more jobs that are lined up and then I can just slip from one into the next with no worry about how long it will be before another job comes along.
•          Start and try for completion of projects on the order daySometimes this can be difficult. I work in 5,000 word batches and although I can, quite easily, write 5,000 words in a day I very rarely do. Writing my own words and writing for projects are so very different that I tend to stretch them out. I sometimes get bored with the writing, looking for any little excuse to stop and do something else. Sometimes I even put off starting the project, waiting until the last possible moment before I begin and that just ends up with me being even more stressed. By starting early, as soon as I get the work, means that those ideas that might have appeared in my mind when I first heard the outline will still be there. I can write fresh, while I’m excited at the project and hopefully avoid the increasingly familiar sensation of staring at the word counter and sigh as it slowly rises. I’m already getting better at this without meaning to since I joined Fiverr. Having that 24 hour deadline, even for something short means that I just don’t have time to put off starting and it’s getting me to approach freelancing with the right mindset.

So there we are, 6 goals to get accomplished in 80 days. I admit that they’re more based around habit building, not specific deadlines. I want to create that mindset, treat my freelance writing and own writing like the job it is while still finding that enjoyment. This way as well I actually have someone to answer to, you guys who can tell me off when I’m making ridiculous excuses and cheer along with me when I actually manage to hit my goals more than once. I might add more later, take some away. I might even include a couple of deadline related goals as they appear, that’s the joy of A Round Of Words in 80 Days. But for now I’m happy with these and I look forward to seeing how I do.

Until next time, have fun, keep reading, keep writing and love your life.

Log Lines - One Sentence Summaries and Why They're Important

I read a very interesting blog post by Kristen Lamb the other day. It was about log lines, specifically the ability to summarise your story in at one sentence. Now I’ve never put much stock in that idea, preferring to have a much longer paragraph. But then I wrote a log line for a story I wrote for work and I realised how helpful it can be. Once I tried to apply it to several of my WiPs though I realised exactly how twisty and bendy my stories usually are. In fact Love Complications is the only one where I could actually get a sentence summary down, probably because it’s YA and as a result has a fairly simple plot. Well that and The Autharium Project but given that it’s only just been outlined and not written that isn’t particularly surprising.

These one sentence summaries are known as log lines, a way for you to explain your story when you get that inevitable "so what are you working on?" question that comes up every time someone new finds out that you're a writer. I think they’re key though because even when you get lost in all the sub plots and details there is still something there for you to aim for you to focus on. They basically boil down your story down into the key plot.

There are five key parts of a log line (Kristen puts it better than I do so definitely go and check out her blog which you can find here). Anyway these five parts are;

• The protagonist
• An active verb
• An active goal
• The antagonist
• The stakes.

I’ll use a little example here. The logline for The Autharium Project (boy I need to come up with a new name for that soon) would be;

Sky pirate Captain Kaya Rush must find the Oracle of Truth before Commander Arnoth Bay in order to save the man she loves.

There is a lot more to the story than this, including witches and magic and dead civilisations but the logline above is the key storyline, the concept that I started off with. It is this logline that I need to keep in mind when I’m writing and when I’m editing. Whatever else is involved in the story, whether it’s a romantic subplot or a sudden abandonment by her crew I need to keep aiming for that key part of the story to shine through. More importantly the logline can help me see how what Kaya’s goal is and how to stop her reaching it. These obstacles are what makes the story, any story, interesting and reminds you where your attention needs to go.

Now Kristen focuses on loglines in terms of how they can help sell your book, gauge market interest and also, hopefully, help to get an agent. But I realised that if you come up with the logline early enough it can be a massive help when it actually comes to writing the book. It is so easy, too easy, when you’re writing to get swept away in these new ideas for events and things that happen to your characters. You get so caught up in getting them all out, fixing them up to look pretty that you can forget the key idea, the one thing that caught your eye about the story and made you want to write that idea rather than another one. The logline helps you focus, it helps you to remember what it is that got you so fired up about the concept that you started to plan and outline and write. And hopefully it helps you write a great novel.

So what am I going to do with this new found information? I’m going to apply it to each and every one of my WiPs. Feral Diaries I know needs one, it needs to be cleared up. Once its cleaned up I can continue my revisions with that logline in mind and hopefully create a more rounded story. Wolfe needs one and right now it’s not clear what that key storyline is. For the moment Wolfe is comprised of one thing after another happening to a man who just wants to be left alone. Swords and Magic needs one too, in fact that whole project needs to be completely planned out which is something I hope to get to once The Autharium Project is wrapped up. I've also realised that from now on I need to be creating the logline once the outlines are done and checking the two against each other. It may make the initial story a little leaner but there's always the sub plots and detail to make the stories bigger. From the beginning it's always important to know what the end goal is.

So what might your loglines be for some of your projects? Do you think mine sounds interesting? Let me know below in the comments, I love to hear from you.

Keep an eye out for my next post where I talk about the Three Act Structure and why I'm now so keen on using it.