Suze is Hunting Muses, 7

Hi. My name is Suze Kay, and I’m a proud moderator of Voices in Minor, a community of Vocal authors who desire to uplift, inspire, and support one another. Every Wednesday, PViM will publish a weekly round-up of whatever lures my muses closer to my writing nook.

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Welcome back, friends! And happy Wednesday. I hope your weeks have been fruitful and fun. It was a beautiful 70˚F day in New Jersey yesterday, and I got to take a lovely walk culminating in margaritas and vegetarian tacos.

This week has been abnormally productive. If you subscribe to me, you're probably sick of my output -- sorry for the absolute onslaught of stories! I've written about 1,800 words a day for the last eight days for my series Women Who Stay. I mentioned it in last week's installment, not yet knowing just how deeply it would swallow me.

Right now, I'm writing Chapter 25 and expecting to be done around 30. This time last week, I thought I would write a tidy nine or 12 chapters and call it good. Certainly, that's what most people would like from a series on Vocal. The longer it goes on, the more sure I am that I'm losing my readers, simply because reading it is such a big ask of their time. But I'm strangely ok with that, because as much as I love seeing hearts and comments come in, I'm now feeling way more satisfied by the practice of building this story.

Right now, my total word count for the tale stands at 14,775. That's just a couple of thousand words under my longest-running novel project, which I've been pecking away at for (*embarrassed shuffle*) seven years. And I hate, like, half of the words in it. So, seeing as I've done little else but write that series and work in the kitchen this week, I hope you won't mind me musing a little here today about why this particular project is flowing so well for me. No spoilers, no self-congratulation or -flagellation, just thoughts about the writing process.

Breaking it Down

I think the key to my productivity is the slightly arbitrary word count limit I've set for myself. Each chapter is precisely 600 words when I submit (although that number sometimes wiggles a little bit up or down on the post-posting reread thanks to the Quick Edit function). 600 words seems to be my sweet spot. Within that amount, I can do a couple of quick scene changes to set some backstory and change locations, or I can delve deeply into complex dialogue and character work.

My favorite chapters to write consisted mostly of dialogue. It reminds me of the theater courses I took in high school, where we dissected a play's scenes in "beats." I learned that great dialogue is a battle of wills, with each character coming into the conversation with a very specific motive and each word they say meaningfully aimed towards accomplishing their goal. That's been a really helpful mindset as I construct each chapter's inner workings.

In such short chapters, every word counts. Every hesitation, movement, or flustered babble must mean something. Writing like this feels like honing a blade -- I'm learning, with every word I choose, to get to the point.

Letting Loose

That seven-year novel project is, I fear, dead on arrival. I won't give up on it just yet, but I now wonder if it was doomed before I wrote my first chapter. Because I know exactly what happens. I have a 20-page outline for a three-book arc, with every twist and turn predetermined. It's a great plot, but it wasn't built around my characters. Every time I sit down to write, I feel like I've fallen into a trap: even if she's properly motivated, it seems that things just happen to my character because I said so.

I started Women Who Stay with a very vague idea of character, background, and plot arc. As I near the end, I have a very good idea of where I'm going next and how it all wraps up. But I don't have an outline. It felt a little scary at first, constantly treading uncharted waters. I worried that details would fall through the cracks. That I'd write myself into a dead end.

Surprise! I love it. Writing feels so organic. My characters are driving the story. I'm not moving them like chess pieces. They're making their own choices, good and bad, that move them through the world, and they're constantly surprising me. My longer book attempts have failed because I get bored, and writing starts to feel like a chore. But in this series, because I don't really know what happens next, every day I feel the urge to return to my blank screen and say, Cool, now what?

Falling in Love

Speaking of my characters... They're all nasty little pieces of work. They're contemptible creatures. They make mistakes and bad decisions. And, ooooo, I love them for it.

One of my favorite compliments I ever received on my writing was that a reader could feel my love and empathy for my most horrible, mean characters, and that made them feel more real. Very few people are straightforward villains in their own eyes. Everyone has an internal compass of ethics and logic. Just because it isn't complimentary to ours doesn't make it incomprehensible.

When I was a kid, I was bullied very badly. One boy would mock my appearance and shove me on the playground. Later, I learned that he had a crush on me. I also learned his father beat his mother. Though I still don't appreciate how he treated me, I know now that he was only modeling the behavior he saw at home. Another group of girls ganged up and ostracized me. Years later, I learned that their mothers did the same thing to my friends' mothers. Again, their social development was informed by what they learned at home. And if I were to ask them now, as adult women, if they regret how they treated me, I doubt they would even remember what I'm talking about -- they saw the same situation from a different perspective, with a different background, and with their own motivations.

Writing about people who do bad things is fun because I get to deconstruct their actions. I get to make sense of the previously incomprehensible human propensity for cruelty. I get to lift the curtain and feel sorry for them, instead of for myself or the state of the world.

Lessons Learned

Still with me? Phew! Here's a quick summary of what I hope you can take away from my ramblings and into your own.

1. Practice making beats: Maybe you need 1,000 words to play with. Maybe, like L.C. Schäfer, you only need 366. Either way, I think it's a really useful activity to see what you can do to write a compelling scene or story within a set limit of words. It will force you to get creative. It will force you to cull with intent.
2. Leave yourself room: Sometimes it's good to feel like God when you're writing. After all, you're building a world! You're creating people! But don't paint yourself into a corner by exerting what you want over what is necessary. Give yourself room to reevaluate the choices you make. Let yourself doubt, then boldly rechart your path.
3. Let your characters move themselves: Real people make choices, every day. They go to visit their mother not because she's sick, but because they feel some type of way about it -- obligated. Concerned. Guilty. That feeling informs how they drive, how they sit, and how they speak. Sit with your character for a bit, and endeavor to understand why they feel the way they do. Then, go write about their visit.

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