Planting Seeds

When you're writing a story, especially a novel, you probably don't want to give everything away right at the beginning. Some details are better when you save them for later. But how do you get there? Do you drop hints along the way? How do you build up to revealing something? 

I've noticed this concept coming up quite a bit while I'm editing my novel, particularly with my subplots. I've always called this method "planting seeds," as in, I'm planting just the start of an idea that will be in full bloom later on in the novel (that analogy works, right?). Sometimes I worry, though, if this actually works. By the time that idea is in full bloom, does the reader care anymore? 

Example time! One of my subplots in UL involves Jordan's friends, Brian and Eric. Every time we see them, it's brought up how Eric has a crush on a girl, but he never says who she is. At first, it may seem like this is useless information, especially when there are much bigger things going on in the main plot. But later on in the book, who this girl is and how she factors into the story are much more important. She's not so important early on in the book, but when she actually does show up, I'm hoping that it's not so random because I've been hinting at her all along. 

I've done something similar when it comes to certain character details. Maybe one character doesn't want to reveal something about himself, but since the idea has been brought up, eventually it has to be explored. Or, another example, there's a certain detail about Jordan's mother that he keeps secret from the reader, but later on in the book, he's forced to reveal it to another character. I've tried to drop hints up until this point but really spent a long time avoiding it (but on purpose!). When it's finally revealed, we can look back and think, oh that's what he was talking about! 

Basically what I'm trying to accomplish is to just have a moment where the reader should think, "oh, ok, this will definitely come up again later!" Even if it's not necessarily important to the plot right at that moment. But my hope is that planting these seeds will make the moments later on where the idea is actually relevant not so out of nowhere. Hopefully the reader will believe it because they at least knew something was going to happen. 

The thing I worry about is whether the reader will notice or even care when these hints are dropped. Or maybe when the real idea is revealed, they'll think back on all of those hints that went over their heads. 

Do you plant seeds early on in your stories?

I Finished Chapter 11! (Sort Of...)

I was originally going to write a blog post for Monday, but on Sunday night I was actually getting some editing done. I figured I would have to pull myself away from editing in order to write a post, and my energy was probably better spent on the editing. Not only because I've been working on this novel for my entire freaking life more than six years, but I'm still pushing towards my Camp NaNoWriMo goal of getting 60 hours of editing done this month.

So how are things going? Still pretty slow, actually. But progress is progress, right? If I only get an hour of editing done every day, that's still a whole hour that I wasn't previously doing.

I've been stuck on Chapter 11 for pretty much forever. There were just a lot of things to work with. There was main plot and subplot. The chapter had three whole scenes, all with breaks in between, which I'm not a huge fan of. I like at most to have two separate scenes, or have a chapter that just flows through several days of action without actually making any breaks. Three scenes was a bit jarring to me, also considering the fact that not one, but TWO of them were make-out scenes. Seems a little excessive for one chapter. I kept wondering if both were really necessary.

The easiest decision for this chapter was that I did not actually need BOTH make-out scenes. Picking the one to keep was easy, too. The second one was longer and more in depth, actually progressing the physical relationship between my characters, which is what I'm aiming for whenever one of these scenes takes place. The first scene was really short and the purpose of it was more so that one character could manipulate another, which I realized I could just do with dialogue. The making out just wasn't necessary.

But anyway, this post wasn't supposed to be about make-out scenes (booooooooooooooo!). On Tuesday, I actually finished my edit of Chapter 11! And yet, the work isn't done.

See, when I started to work on that first scene, it was only two pages. And those two pages sucked. Seriously. I had a note on the first page that just said "make this not suck." So I basically approached it like I had to completely rewrite it. Maybe a few lines here and there could stay, but overall, completely new words. And that's pretty much what happened. And not just new words...a whole lot of new words.

Two pages eventually transformed into five. When I realized how long this scene was becoming, I figured it could probably stand as its own chapter. Now that it's finally done, my third draft has a complete Chapter 11. Woohoo!

However! I still have two scenes to edit from the original Chapter 11. Those two scenes will now be Chapter 12. This will probably throw me off when I talk about future chapter edits since I basically added an entirely new chapter to the third draft. But something is done, at least!

So, is my original Chapter 11 done? Not quite. But is my NEW Chapter 11 done? Yes! I'll take that as a win.

Old scene...

New chapter!

Failing at Camp

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How the heck did it get to be July so fast? As usual, I'm way behind on my goals. I wanted to be done with my third draft of UL by now and I'm still stuck on Chapter 11. I've been wanting to give myself a bit of a kick in the butt when it comes to editing, so I did something drastic. 

On Friday night, pretty much at the last minute, I decided to sign up for Camp NaNoWriMo. I chose a revision project and set my goal for 60 hours of editing. I figured that was roughly 2 hours a day, which was way more than I've been doing but not so ridiculous that I didn't think I could do it. Now with four whole days under my belt, how have I been doing?

Well, uh, not so good actually. As usual, whenever I set a goal, I never seem to come close. The very first day I did absolutely nothing. I don't even know why. I didn't have work that day. I don't really have a good excuse. The next day, I did make a solid effort, but didn't even get over two hours, let alone to four to catch up. I set the stop watch on my phone while I edited and ended up with an hour and thirteen minutes.

Then I had to change things up. When you have your goal set as hours, the Camp NaNo site only accepts whole hours as counting toward the goal. So when I tried to put in that hour and thirteen, I was only credited for the hour (even when I tried 1.25 it just put in one...yes I know that was giving myself two extra minutes...shhh....). I wanted those extra minutes to count, so I changed my goal from hours to minutes. 

So now it's 3600 minutes. How far have I gotten? As of writing this post (about 5PM on the 4th): 73. Yup, just that hour and thirteen from Sunday. I suck at this. 

The good news is that the day is not over, so maybe by the time you read this, I'll have added some minutes. The even better news is that it's still really early in the month, so maybe somehow and with some kind of miracle occurring, I'll actually get to my goal. 

I have no idea where 60 hours of editing will bring me in the story, but at least it will be further than when I started. 

Do you think I can still achieve my editing goal? Anyone else doing Camp NaNoWriMo?