November Novelist on Fictionary

At the end of Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, my friend Sarah said, “Well. We totally saw that ending coming.” 

I hadn’t, though. What magic makes her able to see the ending before it comes? 

Thus, at age fifteen, thanks to Sarah, Romy, and Michelle, I began my lifelong fascination with story structure.

Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion

Discovery Writing is a Hero’s Journey

Some people call it “pantsing,” but, like many writers, I call it “discovery writing.” This implies that I need to discover the story as I write it.

Not everyone’s version of discovery writing is the same. I need to jump into the water to know just how cold it is and see if I can swim. I start with a few ideas, a basic feeling, a character I love, and then start building it as I go. The story is already there, a mystery to be explored. Discovery writers often like to “write into the dark,” as Dean Wesley Smith says. 

The way Fictionary helps me is this: the templates offer checkpoints, goals to hit, so I know I’m not climbing the wrong side of the mountain. I can write whatever I want, in any order I want, and learn as I go. All I need to do is consider the pivotal story arc scenes along the way, like challenges on my adventure. “Are you ready to write a climax scene? Because if so, it would go about here.”

I’m not in any way controlled by the templates. They are only invitations, calls to action, and I can heed them or not.

My Novel Oubliette

Since 2010, almost every year, I have written a novel. My “writing” folder on my desktop has NINE novels in first, second, or third draft states. I never sent them to developmental editors because I knew they were too much of a mess for me to be able to foot the bill. 

Then I decided to get serious about editing them and help other writers along the way. Like many writers, I’m an obsessive consumer of story knowledge, including Writing Excuses and Helping Writers Become Authors, with special love for Mary Robinette Kowal’s classes, Brandon Sanderson’s lectures at BYU, and Dan Wells’ talk on seven-point structure. 

Still, I ended up poignant blobs of story and words every year, though the MRK classes really made me understand structure a lot better. 

It felt hopeless.

Last year, I heard Sacha Black (aka Ruby Roe) talk about Fictionary editing certification, and I thought, “Finally! Maybe I can work something into shape enough to send it to an editor!” So I joined the certification class, got certified (not as easy as it sounds, y’all. Maybe you aren’t surprised?), and now I am on track to self-publish my first novel this year. 

I signed up for a yearly membership so I could take classes every week, taught by fellow novelists. Live classes on making scenes a microcosm of the novel, classes on story structure, classes on creating primary or secondary mystery plots, romance novel structure, creating your series, writing fantasy… Oh my. Total kid in a candy shop. I died and went to story heaven.

For some people, writing a book a year with Nanowrimo (RIP) was an outlet that required no end, a journey with no destination. That’s beautiful. 

For many others, though, we wanted our stories to be read, one day. Fictionary made a pivotal difference for me. It doesn’t make me any other kind of writer than I am – it just makes me way, way better.

(Happy Sigh.)

This year, Fictionary.co is offering October Outliner (for Fictionary Premium) and November Novelist (for all Fictionary members) classes, with free write-ins. I’m so excited! I will be hosting one of the write-ins.

You can follow that up with their structural editing classes, and with their revision classes.

So worth it.