D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

fantasy novel

Give Me an Inch, I’ll Make You a Book

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I went onto the web site of a prominent office supply chain the other day and ordered a thousand 4 x 6″ index cards. I love my 4 x 6 cards. They are, perhaps, the most used tool in my writing arsenal, and I utilize one for each scene in my books. I usually start out with 20 or 30 of them, with such details as “Battle Day 1” or “Lisen in bath” or “the reunion” and build the stack from there.

That’s how the story unfolds for me—little vignettes in time with rarely any details at all. Just a moment carved out. And as I near that scene, what has led up to it begins to take on meaning, and I jot down pieces of action and dialogue and plot points that I intend to get into the composition of the scene. In addition, I note the day (numbered sequentially from the beginning of the book) and the date as well as the number of the scene. (I don’t break my books into chapters until I’m on my final draft.) I also finalize whose point of view will best tell this bit of the story. For instance, under “Lisen in bath” I wrote a brief exchange of dialogue between Lisen and her companion in the bath. What they say isn’t relevant to the plot, but it is relevant to Lisen’s state of mind at that moment. On the other hand, “the reunion” is blank save for the POV and the day/date.

I play with these cards as their numbers increase. By the time I was through the first draft of the third book in my Lisen of Solsta trilogy, Blooded, I had 94 scenes and, hence, 94 cards. That’s basically an inch of cards, and I still pull them out every once in a while and fondle them. Yeah, I know, I’m weird, but I’m a writer, okay? In my defense, I often refer to them if I’m trying to find the part where such-and-such happens. How many members were there in the privy council? And where did they all sit around the table?

4 x 6 cards become Blooded
4 x 6 cards become Blooded

I do have a scene outline for each draft—as scenes do sometimes appear in subsequent drafts, disappear completely or move around—but that outline doesn’t hold the precious notes that remind me what my intent was for that scene. And where people were sitting around the table in the privy council, of course.

So, there you have it. How an inch of 4 x 6 cards became a novel. And I’m at it again. I have 22 completed scenes and 22 cards. About 20 cards with scenes awaiting writing lined up, but those will likely double to triple in volume before I’m done. After which I will have enough cards to write ten more books. Goodie!

FREE

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For the heroic teenager inside every a woman, a female hero who carries none of the usual female baggage into the story.  In Fractured, the first book of the Lisen of Solsta trilogy, Lisen views her non-sexist world of Garla through the eyes of a 17-year-old young woman who has just returned from a 7-year sabbatical on modern-day Earth.  Get her for free July 1-31 only.  Fractured on Smashwords in nearly  every possible e-reader format.  Just fill in the code at the top of the page when you check out.

It Took Ya Long Enough

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Yeah, I suppose it did.  In fact, I’m surprised I’m here.  For thirty-five years, admittedly with several multi-year breaks, I’ve put all I could into writing the story of a young woman now named Lisen who learns that the destiny she’d envisioned for herself has dissolved into dust in favor of a far more ambitious fate.  This was always the heart of the story, always its thrust.  The fact that she now has seven years’ experience as a Southern California teenager behind her changed nothing.  In fact, that change in the initial setup only enhanced Lisen’s accessibility and the poignancy of her journey.

My journey, on the other hand, has followed a somewhat circuitous route.  I’m not going to lie down on the couch here and confess my innermost workings, but the truth is that my father was a great one for cautioning me not to get my hopes up and my mother—well, she lacked the ability to love.  I grew up incapable of finishing what I started, especially when doing so could bring me any sense of accomplishment.  And yet, the one thing I’ve never given up on—despite giving up on it a dozen times a day, sometimes for weeks at a time—is the tale of Lisen, the young woman of destiny.

When I realized this a few years back, I asked myself why.  It was my very first novel.  The sage advice is to toss that first attempt.  Or, at the very least, pack it away never to see the light of day again.  I tossed the first version, no problem.  Then I rethought it—re-envisioned it, if you will.  I dumped that version, too.  And then, once more.  Why?  The fourteen-year-old inside of me wanted me to tell her the story, to tell her the story the way it was meant to be told.  I think that’s when I truly committed my all, what I had and what I’d have to dig up from somewhere deep within.  Whatever it took, I had finally promised that inner teen and the outer me that I would never hold back again.

And I haven’t.  I decided to independently publish Fractured because I couldn’t seem to write a selling query letter.  I couldn’t afford to pay someone to prepare the book for printing.  I couldn’t afford to pay someone to design my cover.  I kept hitting the rocks in the road, sometimes allowing them bring me to a dead halt, sometimes jumping over them with glee.  But I overcame all the obstacles, and I am very proud of the finished product—the writing, the story telling and the package it comes in.

So, to anyone who aspires to a personal goal, I say this.  Success does not come from the number of people who know who you are or the amount of money you make.  Success comes from within and the satisfaction of knowing that, given your limitations, whatever they may be, you did your very best and never gave up.