Macro & Micro Development

Another day, another attack of the outline!

I was up late last night working on the outline, going through character plot summaries for the NaNo novel, and I asked myself... what am I doing this for? Not as some existential crisis of "why do I write" or "why am I here" but moreso, "What will this novel say?" I noted that in the outline I haven't written much in the way of character development nor any kind of thematic character arcs. The flourishes are there, but I haven't delved into it yet, which is odd for me for writing an outline, so it got me thinking about the details of development.

I've noted this back in the character development blog, but it is worth saying again that character development is the best plot driver. A series of events simply happening for the sake of happening don't mean squat if you're not invested in the characters they are happening to. Usually when I'm outlining a novel, I am outlining the thematic arc for the character first. IE, what are the themes I'm shooting for in the story and how will X, Y, Z character tie back into those themes? I peg the bigger themes first, and typically, I have every character in the story tied to at least one or two of the main themes so that, even if it's not a major arc, everyone has some stake in the themes of the story. I start with the biggest stuff first- the world-changing, life-affirming arcs. The MACRO arc, as I like to call it. Then I'll work to tie every character into that arc in some way or another. Which end will they lie on? How will this affect and change them?

I just thought it was odd to note that I hadn't done that this time around, yet. Which doesn't bother me, I just thought it was worth noting. I think I know why I changed that method for this story, though. The screenplay that the original story is based on only fleetingly mentions the developments that will occur in this story. There is next to no development in terms of what happened before the beginning of that story, and I had this idea in my head of exactly what that story would be and I didn't want to lose any of it.

So now that the character plots for the major characters are set in stone, I need to set about writing the main themes down based on that plot and look at anything that may need to be added or subtracted from it ahead of the start of actual writing for NaNo. This weekend is looking to be packed full, so I've really only got today and Monday to get ready for the biggest writing challenge I've taken on in a very long time. But that's no problem! I'm already 7,000 words more prepared than I have ever been for NaNo, so I'll take it. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Nicholas Haskins

Settings & Research

Isn't research awesome?


You get to visit far-away places that you'll never get to visit, and in my case, see things I'll never get to see. Researching a novel 100 years ago couldn't have been nearly as engrossing as it is today. It is one of the reasons I am so happy and grateful for modern technology, like Google maps, where I can see a satellite view of possible settings for parts of my story... I can see mountains I'll never climb, and frigid towns I'll never set foot in. It's so amazing!

Specifically, my story needs a couple of remote, icy cold islands, so I decided to look in the northern reaches of Canada and stumbled upon two uninhabited islands: Coats Island, in the Hudson Bay, and much further north, Prince Charles Island in the Northwest Passages. My story is fictional and extremely fantastical, so they'll be getting some fictional beef-ups, but I always like to try to ground my stories in something that is real and tangible, if possible. I'll never set foot on either of those islands, but I can research their climate and general topography and determine how long it'd take to reach one of them under various circumstances.

Character work is going extremely well. I have been using some of the pieces of this blog as they existed before, so some of that work is done for me, but I am transforming all of it into the groundwork for my NaNoWriMo novel, which I'll be starting in just about a week.

RE: my last blog, I have received a number of different messages from people encouraging support for trying to do what's right by me, and I just wanted to thank everyone for that here. Back at it later tonight with our latest podcast to edit, so I'll be splitting time once the words stop coming. Speaking of words, re-purposing some from the blog that used to be here and writing new ones, my outline for NaNo is now over 6,000 words. I can't believe it! I'm finishing up major character outlines and I'm going to sketch out a rough plot outline later this week. I've also done some outlining on the settings, but that isn't done just yet.

Happy writing!

Nicholas Haskins

Distractions

I feel like I've just had some kind of awakening.

Did you ever feel like life is coming at you from 40,000 directions, each of them pulling you along with them, even if only for a little bit? What I'm about to type is hardly a grand revelation for many, but still, I just found myself in the trap of social media earlier tonight, reading the same news I've read before or seeing the same posts I've seen before, and even tried reaching in and debating the same debates I've debated before. Halfway through typing a response to one of the posts I simply stopped and just stared at the screen. For nearly five minutes, probably... I wasn't counting. But the post in question is something I've stated for years and debated for years. Suddenly I had a flood of "who cares" creep into my head, because really... who does? What does it matter? Why is having the same discussion about a movie for the 1000th time a good way to spend time? It's bloody well not. At all. And I'm not gonna do it anymore.

There's a line in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring that goes something like, "I feel like butter scraped over too much bread." That's about where I am, right now- with everything. I suppose I intend this blog to be therapeutic, even if it is just to spill out my frustrations and vent a little bit. I spent a good hour today on social media sites leaving groups en masse, from movie to TV show groups and everything else in between, and then unfollowed a large group of people whose posts I no longer care to see. I released this update regarding the Epic Film Guys podcast, which will continue with a weekly release every Thursday, but I'm also scaling back my involvement in Podern Family & everywhere else across the board. Rest assured I'll still promote our own show and many others, but I need to take a step back from everything before I break, and I feel like the cracks have already formed and are beginning to deepen.

Why? A million reasons, really. I'm just spread too thin, to revisit the simile above. Especially as I begin to ramp up for NaNoWriMo, I realize how much of a time commitment writing is, and the fact that I gave it up to focus on a million other things, and now I've reached a point where I just can't do it all anymore. Even if NaNo weren't a goal of mine, I still just don't have the time to dedicate to all of these things. I've got a life offline, a wife and two sons, and I've got mental and physical health concerns that have burdened me to the point where I feel like they're affecting other aspects of my life. I have household chores that need to be done, other mundane real-life-ities that I won't bother going into here, and I just... snapped. Something in me broke, and every letter I've already typed about this and continue to type in this blog (my final update about it) feels like a weight lifting off. I've reached a crossroads yet again in my life where I feel like I did before I went off to college. That was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and it took a hearty kick into my own ass to make it happen and I feel like that's what I need to do again. If we don't challenge ourselves, how do we ever push ourselves further than we've ever been? If we don't fight and struggle and reach for more and for better, we end up sitting and stagnating and dying without ever really having done... anything.

I don't want that to be me. So, I left all those groups. Now they won't distract me. I'm unloading some responsibilities I've taken on because I simply can't manage them anymore. God help me, but tomorrow I'm going to make a list (I bloody despise lists) and pop it on the wall over my desk of my daily must-dos, and hold myself accountable to getting them done. Others have promised to help hold me accountable as well, and I thank you all for that. I'm going to focus on me-time and some mental health time and get back to exercising (though I am limited a great deal by my ongoing foot issues), and I think that'll help to pump some energy back into me. Even a year or so ago I know I was possessed of an almost limitless energy that is just gone now. I used to be a person so full of life and energy and I prided myself on that, but lately it feels like I don't have any. I feel like I'm just checking off another day on the way to dying, which may sound a bit morbid, but it's true!

That said, speaking of distractions, all of this has distracted me from continuing work on my outline and doing NaNo prep, but I am not deterred. Tomorrow's a brand new day, and I still feel the energy in me to do the work. Now that I'm letting go, I'll have a little more time and energy to do it. Thanks everyone for reading.

Nicholas Haskins

Character Development

Ahhhhhhh, character development. Easily near the top of my list for favorite parts of the creative process, right behind editing, which is by far the favorite. After penning the introductory blog I did a couple days back, I sat back and looked at everything and really wondered if I was going to stick to this thing. NaNoWriMo is a little over a week away, and given my string of failures and non-starts I was worried that a couple months from now I'd look back at the introductory blog as just another false start.

As I mentioned previously this blog used to be a tie-in to a screenplay I've drafted a few times called The Red Ray Lives. In the blogs, the main character of the story kept a "journal" of sorts that kind of fleshed out the backstory of the world, but that journal always had a set ending point, meaning the beginning of the screenplay. The Red Ray Lives is a superhero story, but its most important characters are not necessarily the superheroes that live within it. There's a huge backstory gap that exists for a couple of the characters that is just begging to be spilled out into a longer form. So, I penned the initial blog for this project and sat back and wondered, but then as I lay in bed the night I completed it, I could not get to sleep. My mind was churning with ideas! I broke the #1 rule of the writer and did not get out of bed to write them down, but I didn't have to- I knew these ideas were strong because they just kept repeating themselves in my head. I was also very tired physically, so no matter how strongly my mind wanted to do it, the body would have none of it.

I awoke the next morning and pulled up a blank word document, not entirely sure what to expect. By the time it was all over I'd written 2,400 words, and nearly all of that total is simply a character summary and that character's specific footsteps through the world of the story. I was utterly shocked. It has been a long time since I have really sat down and cranked out something new, something substantial, a solid brick for the foundation if you will. As a writer, I firmly believe that you must populate your worlds with solid, well-developed characters, or they will fail. One of my biggest criticisms time and again when watching films is a lack of character development. No matter the medium, character development is the vehicle by which a reader/audience/etc is introduced to and explores your world, and in order to sell that world to the intended audience they have to be a living, breathing character. Not only that, but they have to be a living, breathing character within this fantastical world of superheroes and make it believable that this is their world. If the character in the story is alive in their world then it is easier for an audience to open the door to it and step inside.

This also afforded me the opportunity to do some writing research, specifically on a couple of the major settings in the story. Thank the lord for the internet! Google Maps allows me to go to places I'll never really be able to go and to read all about them. After all, what good are solid, realistic characters in your story if you can't put them into a believable setting?

Wherever you are in your NaNo prep, I hope that this continues to fuel your inspirations and open up your dreams. Thank you to everyone who read the first piece and had so many kind words for me about it. As for me, I'm going to sit down with the outline again and see if I can't breathe a bit more life into it before I settle into a John Carpenter movie marathon. We're recording a podcast with some guys in Australia this evening, and I want to be prepared! Thanks very much for reading!

Nicholas Haskins

NaNoWriMo 2016 & Introductions

Greetings world!

This is a blog I used for a couple years between 2014-2015 to log some writing samples I was doing as a tie-in to a screenplay I wrote. For now, I've purged the entire blog, and I intend to keep this as active as I possibly can in the lead-up to NaNoWriMo 2016. What is NaNoWriMo, you might ask? It's National Novel Writing Month! The goal is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words during the month of November. You can check out my profile at the NaNo website here. 

In the lead-up to the start of November, I'll be completing at the very least a bare-bones outline of what I intend to do for the month. While I do want to push this project as a novel, I am also planning to adapt it in the future as a serial podcast. I currently co-host the Epic Film Guys podcast, which you can find over at www.epicfilmguys.com! 

A little about me to get started... I am 36 years old. I am married with two amazing boys. I graduated from Clarion University of PA in 2010 with a B.A. in English (writing). I have been writing for a heavy majority of my life, nearly thirty years, including one of the biggest projects I am involved with that I initially envisioned when I was around nine to ten years of age. I haven't done any writing in at least a year or so outside of some movie reviews. I wasn't hit with a case of writer's block, but rather I consciously decided to take a break from it to gain some perspective on my numerous projects and decide what I want to do with them. In this time I started podcasting with my friend Justin, and we are currently over a year in. I manage the twitter account for our podcast and do all of the post-production and sound editing work; our show is a film comedy podcast that aims to not only discuss what we love about going to the movies, but to have fun as well. 

For the remainder of October, I'll be focused on a sketch outline of what I intend to write. The characters and the world in which the story will be placed is part of a screenplay I already wrote called The Red Ray Lives, but the story I'll be writing will touch on the series of events that leads to the event known as the Day of Magnus, which is only briefly touched on in the screenplay. 

So why the blog? A lot of it is to hold myself accountable... and so my writing friends and fellow NaNoers can hold me accountable as well. In years past I have started writing for NaNo but ended in various states of completion, from barely beginning the outline to halfway through that year's project. This year I want to make sure I'm pushing myself to my absolute maximum and I am determined to get past 50,000 words. It's only just about 1,700 words per day, which may seem like a lot, but I've dwarfed that number in a single day when I am so motivated. While I won't be posting the novel itself in the blog, I will be posting select excerpts from it as well as some of my notes, and daily postings to advise everyone of my progress. 

If you're interested in being a beta reader for my novel, please contact me on twitter or send me an email. Meantime, I've got a lot of planning to do... thanks for reading!

- Nick