D. Fierst

A small success! As of now I am sitting with a completed draft for All I Want is to Not Be Alone, coming in around 45,000 words. It’s a bit on the shorter scale for a YA novel, but given its journal entry style, I feel the brevity is warranted.

I’ve made one round of edits and cut between 5,000-6,000 words. I prefer to cut as much fat as possible upfront, because I can always bring some of it back if needed. My goal is to say as much as possible with as little as possible.

In my last post I touched a little on my writing process and thought that is a topic well worth elaborating on. Especially since I have never studied or formally learned creative writing (or any other format, for that matter).

I look at writing a story in a way, funny enough, that is directly linked to making music. I’m not a professional musician but have been playing instruments and in bands since I was a teenager, making for over thirty years of experience. Anywhere from professional studios to my home studio, to a 4-track tape recorder, I’ve been a part of writing and recording albums, EP’s, singles, and collaborations.

I find when writing something, no matter if it’s only music, music with lyrics, or just written word, I do it with one main goal: to communicate. This, in my little opinion, needs narrative to do the job correctly.

For example, when writing a song, it always starts with that, for lack of a better term, lighting bolt of “Ah-ha!” This can be ¾ of a full song, a single melody, or even just a few notes placed together. Whatever it is, it’s that first jolt that you as the “maker” respond to. If that jolt is big enough, then it usually ends up being a starting point to build off.

That’s good and well for a single song. But I find it’s often the case that I’m gathering many of these small sparks and working on them as a group. That’s when the larger picture comes together of the collection (no matter the final size). It goes beyond the initial creative spark and evolves into a more cerebral, logic, or puzzle-based process of fitting pieces together.  

The next stages of this process fall into the editing side of things. Not just “cutting things up,” but also critically sifting through and finding the nugget of an emotional core. That’s a hard part. And, for me, it often means having to put aside what I thought were completed pieces.

But, once that (sometimes extremely tiring) process is done, you are left with only the exact pieces you need to communicate what you want. Those first few notes brought up a feeling or reaction. The rest is a construction to explore, then communicate that to a listener.

Finally comes the fun part of adding the bells and whistles to that core to expand and exaggerate. No matter if that is writing collective lyrics that are from a central character’s perspective, embellishing sonics, or adding new or additional material.

That’s a world I am comfortable in. It took a good long while to get there, but now I’ve found I can use the same approach in writing books. The chapters are the individual songs, and the book is the album. There are overarching themes and narrative, but each part needs to be contained, needed, working with the others, and adding to the whole.

With that in mind, let me walk you through the example of All I Want is to Not Be Alone.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love zombies. I love zombie movies, shows, books, you name it. So, the first thought was, ‘Well, of course I should write a zombie book.’ Yes, yes, but as we all know, zombie stories aren’t really about zombies, are they?

The first idea was to have a couple trapped in a house and the story revolve around the evolution of their relationship in that setting. But somehow that didn’t stick. That wasn’t the “jolt” I usually know when I have something worth working on.

I can’t even say when, but there was a moment (I do believe it was triggered from the never-ending political news out of the US) that I knew it would work better from the perspective of an American teenage boy.

For a few reasons: 1) It would be about leaving America (or home in general to the “unknown”), and as someone who has done that, it’s often a theme of mine, 2) I wanted to focus on someone younger to show how I feel that demographic is underestimated in their abilities and maturity (not to mention often scapegoated by older generations with no grounds), and 3) I knew it needed to be a male to explore how much societal influence governs and ultimately limits American males’ recognition of and interaction with their emotional state. Especially at that crucial age.

It just seemed to fit perfectly to have an extremely capable teenager in that situation to highlight emotional negligence through pragmatic actions. He thrives in that situation through his pragmatism which is pushed to maximum levels in actively avoiding any emotional state. That was the center, the seed, and the jolt.

After that, the more logic-based choices and execution came into play. His (Timothy) central characteristic traits were clear and they dictated where to place him both physically and socioeconomically. He is driven purely by logic and any major choices were based on that alone. He plans and takes a journey purely based on those grounds.

The key moments in the journey are the small windows when he does allow emotion to take control. Actions in these moments lead to negative outcomes in the zombie landscape, making him again close down in order to survive.

As far as the actual writing steps, I’m not so far off from my song writing methods. With the emotional core and journey clear, I made a general outline. I find it helps me to write the song titles (or, for a book, chapter titles) to map the main points of what happens where. This also lets me see before I even write anything that I have a clear three-act, 20-60-20, setup for the over-all story. Not so dissimilar in making sure a song has a strong verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure.

This way I know each song/chapter will stand alone and be individually important yet contribute and be necessary to the whole. In this case I split a one-year period into chunks to see when and where major points would happen and to make sure the full story unfolds in a natural and easy to follow way.

Finally, from the outline, I laid it all out in a word doc with each expected chapter and subsequent “entries” along with a short note about what should happen in each. I had the full story laid out with all major plot, character and development points and finally only needed to write out all the details. Of course, the writing part takes most of the time, but I find it moves along well because I am never afraid that I don’t know where to go next or that I stray too far from the main idea.

The fun part came in sorting the details. How may zombies make up this horde? What do they look like up close after being affected by the weather for a few months? What effect pedal do I use on guitar for this verse? Do I add strings to this chorus to make it pop? I see it being the same. It’s all a matter of coloring and supporting the basis that is already there: The emotional center conveyed via narrative.

In the end, this way of working allows me to get ideas down fast, but at the same time prepare for the longer haul of the actual writing. Now, if only I could apply this method to making illustrations.

Yeah, that would be nice.