Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing software

We gather the music of words to create a story

by

A few days ago I went to a band camp concert. My daughter was one of the players. As I sat there listening to the rising and falling notes, flutes coming in as clarinets drop away, background drums rolling in crescendo and tubas filling the brief spaces in between, my heart racing and relaxing with each movement, I realized that a good book is much the same.

The opening lines just like the first notes played introduce the vision: science fiction with electronic tones, romance flutes of the first attracting glance, Bronte storms in the kettle drums, piano-keyed mysteries or an oboe lilt of a cobra rising from the basket of an Agatha Christi novel. Each rise in the action another movement to thrill the reader.

The middle movements fill us with ideas, emotions, connecting us as a group to a single vision.  And the final notes, whether sudden and thrashing or softly fading away, give us a sense of closure and completeness.

Writers, like conductors, construct a story with the instruments at hand. We have our characters, imagery, setting, rising action, inciting event, climax, pacing and conclusion just as they have their woodwinds, keys, capriccio, adagio, brass, cymbals and the like. We create an experience, one the reader/listener wishes to experience again and again.

Sitting there caught up in the music of the moment, a part of me felt the desire to race from the auditorium and compose my own worded score, to put into words the images that floated before my eyes in response to the pull the music gave to my imagination. But the other part of me wished to remain to listen as my daughter and her fellow musicians crafted musical stories in my head.

Learning to play an instrument is as essential as learning to write. Not all of us will be great musicians any more than all of us can be best selling writers. But all of us need to experience the attempt to make music, write poetry, paint a picture, sculpt a figure, or crochet an afghan. From each experience we gain much and, on occasion, find beauty to inspire others and be inspired.

What inspires you? 

#music
#writing
#inspiration

Regional word choice: would you rather a frappe or a cabinet?

by

Not just plants are regional: words, too.

I moved all over the place when I was a kid, and I collected words and differences in pronunciation of words like most kids collected bubble gum trading cards.

Milkshake, cabinet, frappe

Even though these words reference the same thing, each brings a different feel to the image. When I think of a frappe being served at my table, the imagined tall glass of white is full of lumpy froth at the top with condensation on the glass so thick it is opaque, and the only places where I can see the milky fluid is where the fingertips of the waitress touched.  And the container is cold, and I cannot view it as any color other than white, with the smell of vanilla beans thick in the breath I take before slurping in the first taste of half air half tantalizing sponginess that sounds like distant firecrackers as the tiny bubbles pop against my lips. 

Tennis shoe, sneaker

I wore sneakers into my teens.  When I first heard there were shoes called tennis shoes, I thought I had to play tennis to wear them.

route: route (root) or route (rout)

Don’t ask me for directions unless you are prepared to hear me switch back and forth in my pronunciation of this word and not even know I am doing it.

aunt: aunt (ant) or aunt (awnt) or aunt (tante)

I only used the first two of this one.  I had two aunts, one on each coast.  I met them when I was a child.  I thought saying Aunt (ant) Sue and Aunt (awnt) Peg was just a case of that being their names, similar to Sally Ann or Jim Bob. Later I understood that they resided on different coasts and geography made all the difference.

submarine sandwich, hoagie, grinder, sub, Italian, hero, wedge

I can still remember when my family was moving from Massachusetts to New Jersey.  We had been traveling for what seemed like all day, and we went into one shop to get something to eat.  I looked at the menu and had no idea what they were offering.  I wanted a submarine sandwich, but there were none listed.  Would a hoagie taste good?  I was about 12 years old and thought this was probably the only place in the US silly enough to call them hoagies.

purse, pocketbook, bag, handbag

This one still gets me in trouble.  I say pocketbook and my students give me blank looks. They trust that I know what I am talking about, but they don’t know what I am talking about.

toilet, john, head, loo, porcelain pony, commode

I only came across the first three of these in my travels.  Toilet is my word of choice, but recently my husband was explaining what a room in the house we are building was and said “commode.”  My daughter looked at me unsure of what we were putting in the house. So I had to explain.

The second one I am very familiar with, but “john” is one I just can’t use.  Both my grandfathers were named John, my brother and my father.  But my mom thought it was quite funny to say things like, “John is in the john” or “We have several johns, are you looking to talk or use?”  My dad was a Navy man, and when out on the ocean fishing, he always said “head” but never in the house.  And he never referred to a toilet as a john.

What makes word choice so important? It adds characterization and settings if you are picking a specific region for your story. What regional words have you noted?  Do you know the reason behind their use?

Blog Hop!

by

Hitting the keys

QUESTIONS FOR DECEMBER TWITTER BLOG HOP: I was tagged by E. M. Wynter!
What are you writing?
I am writing my third novel in a time travel series called Students of Jump.  The first book In Times Passed chronicled the activities of Brent Garrett as he learned not just how to travel in time but how to manage his own life on terms he can accept and even find joy in.  He comes from a time in the not-so-distant future and a society that is separate from most of earth’s population.  He has lived under the daunting expectation that he is going to invent something or somehow bring about amazing change in his society.  Jumping into the past was his way of escaping this expectation, but he learns life always carries expectations hard to live up to. The second book No-time Like the Present follows his daughter Misty Meredith who feels Brent Garrett owes her some explanations.  Misty has her own conflicts to resolve and finds jumping through time opens opportunities but cannot by itself fix anything.  But the work I am writing now, Next Time We Meet, involves two characters, Mick and Emily Jenkins, and their search for a sense of belonging in a time ahead of their own. That is the simple premise: it’s the rest that makes it complicated working with these two.


How does this differ from your last work?
I thought the other two novels were difficult because they had two timelines to deal with and a variety of conflicts between characters.  But this book included two demanding additions: one is the fully-developed relationship of Mick and Emily. They are a couple who have lived into their senior years gaining experience, a definite opinion about life and family, and a tight relationship.  The experience they bring feels nearly useless to them as it all occurred in another time, their family connections suffered gaps due to the jumps in time taken by the various members, and their opinions don’t always apply to current conditions.  Their relationship is the only safety line they have.  Mick appears to be the dominant character, but he has functioned for so long with Emily in his life, there is little he does that is not influenced by their relationship, and that brings its own conflicts.  Emily is the hand that carries Mick’s world, and he is the force that keeps them moving forward.  But I love writing about relationships so this has been a challenge but not a difficult one.  The addition of what Mick decides is their best means of becoming part of the family life in the twenty-third century is what creates all the struggle for me as a writer.


It turns out I am writing a science fiction, time travel, mystery novel.  Why didn’t I see that coming?  Mick, with Emily’s agreement, has chosen to spend their time figuring out what caused the unexplained disappearance of Renwick Cray during a simple hop home from Old Garrett Complex.  This occupation is meant to help them become part of the society they have joined.  Emily christens them time-hop detectives, and the two travel about in time following clues as they search for Renwick.  Facing fears and realizing it isn’t as easy as just showing up in a new time is a challenge to the characters, but for me it means a lot of research into the events and locations they are searching as well as keeping their actions logical and progressive as they gain understanding of what actually happened to Renwick.  Hints I left in book 2 effect the decisions and actions, whether sensible or illogical, that occur in book 3. Technology’s limits and advances affect the action as well, and Mick and Emily are learning how to work these new technologies that in many cases are new to everyone in the extended family that makes up the Students of Jump.  That is the main difference, making sure all the clues ultimately lineup without seeming obvious, yet I want the reader to look back and see how the confusion was natural while the final result was also logical.


Why do you write?
To see what is going to happen next, of course.   I don’t think there is an actual reason behind why I write, not one that is a conscious decision, anyway.  I mean, I didn’t decide to breath, but I do breath every day, rhythmically and regularly.  I do decide to eat, but if I don’t, my body won’t last long.  For me writing is a combination of those two normal human conditions.  I write because that is what my mind does with the thoughts that pass through it, and if I didn’t write, something very destructive would happen to my mind; something would most definitely die.  I write because I must, because I feel great when I do it, and I really need to know what is going to happen next.


What is your writing process? 
That is a bit tricky to answer.  I came up with the idea of the first book when I worked as an assembly line worker many, many years ago.  I was listening to the song by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, “I Just Dropped In” and started thinking.  Following the storyline as it played out in my mind kept me from going nutty in the brain-stupefying atmosphere of repetitive work.  I must have written that book in my head at least three times before I finally wrote it down.  The second book just followed the first, like a seedling dropped from the parent into nourishing ground.  Now this third book, I used several programs to assist in developing, though I wrote the first draft of it shortly after finishing the rough draft of book 2.  I used the brainstorming program Freemind to organize the various conflicts, Microsoft OneNote to organize my research and more recently the online program Padlet (see post on selecting timeline program) to keep track of the timeline as Mick and Em jump through time looking for Renwick or his kidnapper.  And all of this ends up in yWriter5 after being drafted in Microsoft Word.


When I get stuck, I lie down and think about where the characters are currently and what they are dealing with.  I don’t get to lay there long, five to fifteen minutes later, I have to get up and write what must be gotten down.  I wake up in the night or find I can’t get to sleep when the two of them are struggling with the facts about Renwick’s disappearance not fitting together, and sometimes I realize I missed an important hint left in a previous book.  Sometimes I work the hint in as a bit of information Mick and Em overlooked, and sometimes I redraft the scene to work more logically with actual events.  I use outlines, hand-written notes, recorded voice memos, and other means of keeping track of my ideas and plans for a written piece.  I avoid telling anyone my ideas so my writing doesn’t lose momentum.  I get feedback after a strong draft is written.  I am inconsistent when it comes to process, but demanding about outcome.  I don’t care how my characters get there, just that they get there.


My books at Amazon.com
My books at Smashwords.com
Twitter handle:  @LDarbyGibbs
Facebook page

Advice: yWriter Details and Goals section for defining purpose

by

Setting up a strong structure with yWriter

I mentioned yWriter way back in the beginnings of writing this blog.  I was explaining a feature in the program that makes it possible to keep track of various facts about characters, such as appearance, relationships, motivations, bio, even alternate names.  It helped me to learn more about a character I thought was not especially important.  I found she had much greater influence and dimension than I originally thought while filling out the character breakdown.

But that is not why I am posting about this program now.  yWriter offers numerous ways for a writer to develop his/her story, but the two features I want to focus on this time is in the Details and Goals sections of each scene. Once you have opened up a scene window, clicking on the Details tab opens up the plotting break down of that particular scene.  Here you note (or plan out) if the event is based on action or reaction, and if it is plot or subplot, and you can assign any tags and determine the time constraints of the scene (character experiences two minutes, four hours or thirty days, what have you).  When combined with the information in the Goals tab, the purpose or lack of it, of the scene become obvious.  And if the scene has no purpose, it is wasted writing.  I love these two features because they make sure that I am keeping the story moving: characters grow, tension mounts, connection exists, i.e., purpose.

The Goals tab is directly connected to the items in the Details tab.  If I selected reaction for the type of scene, then the Goals tab supplies three questions I must answer:  reaction, dilemma, choice.  And if I selected action, then I must respond to goal, conflict, outcome.  I find myself facing the purpose of the scene and the character’s (s’) reasoning.  If I find that my only reason for the scene is to get information out, then I am not making good use of my writing or my reader’s time. All writing should be moving the plot no matter what.  So that necessary information needs to be part of movement not sedentary info dumping.

It is easy to fall into writing about the character learning something or meeting someone because it is essential to events later in the story but not moving forward in the story.  Having to fill out the underlying bones of a scene helps avoid this.  What was my character’s reaction to what happened?  How did this create a problem and what choice did my character find he had to make?  That’s all based on reaction.  What my character’s goal is, what is stopping her from reaching it and what came of her efforts to reach that goal is action based.

yWriter doesn’t write the story, but it sure helps me tell the story better.  When I have to redraft, looking back at what I wanted the scene to accomplish and seeing what actually happened helps me realign the plot or take advantage of that unconscious working of the writing mind.  A scene that seemed to have no purpose gets one as the redraft rolls along and having these features in this program forces me to examine the scene and its relation to the rest of the story.

Some scenes support the main plot while others are subplot events and that is just as important as determining purpose.  Designating a scene as tying my main arc together or developing undercurrent through subplots helps me keep my writing moving in the right direction and makes it so I don’t have to keep it all in my head.  That’s yWriter for you.

How to keep track of facts for a book series?

by

One thing I have been crunching possibilities on is how to keep track of details so they remain consistent between books in a series.  Sometimes it is as simple as did I spell it with a hyphen or without?  What was Misty’s date of birth again?  Is the clump of white hair at her left temple or her right?

I have been using yWriter 5 for organization and word count because it has a section on characters and a place for notes: physical description, alternate names, biography, and the like, as well as the actual chapters.  But I write in a word process and transfer scenes as I go, so I do not always have it open and easy to check my facts.

protect my husband’s wall from sticky note infestation

I have considered a notebook, but that is not split-second access ready.  A wall of sticky notes would be a great idea, but I can just hear my husband now indirectly criticizing by pointing out all the little colorful sheets of paper on the wall which detracts from his fine paint job or the ones floating about the floor because I will be working on this for a few years, what with seven books to the series, and some of that sticky on the paper is going to give itself up to variations in mugginess and dry air.  And what about the fact that I am usually working on two or three projects at once in different stages of production:  drafting, redrafting, editing, getting publication ready?  I don’t have that many walls available.

I never use spreadsheets (some sort of neurosis holding my back from that) unless there is no avoiding them, i.e., other people have to make them and my job has to require I look at them.

Right now I have a piece of graph paper with a timeline on one side and various scribbles on the other for current important facts I keep needing to confirm.  I think it is buried under a draft of my anthology and a notebook full of poetry.

So can anybody recommend a solution to this issue?  I am interested in hearing novel ideas tried and true or otherwise.  Please keep the spreadsheet recommendations down to a minimum though.

WordPerfect: my kind of word processing program

by

I am fully aware that the most popular word processing program out there is Microsoft Word, but my loyalty goes to Corel WordPerfect.  I like the way the program is laid out and some features just simply don’t exist in the same way in Word.  Reveal codes, for example: I love being able to look at each code spelled out and easy to read and delete as I please or not (a simple toggle switch).  I can change formats without finding myself suddenly back in a particular format when I was certain I had changed from outline to word processing or from columns to no column. 

The two programs did become very similar over the years (though my favorite features never left WP); however, the version I have now in WP is far different from the new Word which I am still figuring out.  I have used both for nearly the same length of time:  close to thirty years.  But when I work in WP (which I do for everything personal and most especially for my fiction writing), I just sit easy.  If I am not familiar with some feature, I can figure it out because I understand WP’s logic. This is not the same with Word, which, though I said I have been using it for years at work, still makes me stumble about. 

Recently, my WP began freezing every time I saved my work.  I would write a thousand words, go to save and find myself in permanent freeze and no access to all I had written.  Heartbreaking, as it happened repeatedly, though I did get smart and save after each page, so I could at least see what I had written and could hand copy it.  After a few days I switched my files over to Word so I could work on my book, but I wasn’t happy about it.  I assumed it was an update to my computer operating software (Vista) that brought about the problem and since my version of WP was at least ten years old, I thought it was time to up grade.  I ordered WordPerfect X5 and couldn’t wait for it to arrive.  Now I am not so sure I had the source of the problem correct as the new version suffered from the same problem. 

So there were a few days that I was quite frustrated.  I tried looking for updates, I researched on the web finding the problem actually began back in 2006, though it did not hit me until this past September.  I found suggested solutions, but none worked. Then, a few days ago, I decided to try again.  I experimented and used “save as” instead of the icon for “save.”  It worked just fine. And two days ago an update came through for WP X5.  Now I am back to saving using the icon without freezing.  Now that is a quick fix.  I love WordPerfect.