Sorry fo the long time between posts. Just trying out larger text, so smaller images leave the text still legible.
Again, questions, comments appreciated!
Writing in Plain Sight |
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Sorry fo the long time between posts. Just trying out larger text, so smaller images leave the text still legible. Again, questions, comments appreciated!
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I've been out nursing a number of medical issues ranging from benign tumor on my eyelid to getting rather large bone chips removed from my right shoulder. Let's just say the recovery has been less than fun.
To make matters a little worse, I managed to just nuke the hard drive on my lap top. So, now I get to install Windows 10 as my main OS. And lose all of the data I had on the hard drive. Fortunately I was not stupid enough to have my writing on that hard drive. It's all on removeable media. So. It's been a fun month and half, but the blog-cation is over. NaNoWriMo is on the horizon (I am one of the MLs for my regions, so busy, busy, busy!) Posting will now resume on a regular schedule. ... and my daughter wants to turn one of my earlier writings into an audio book. We'll see how that goes. I might just make it available as a download, if my cringing ego will let me ... It's quiet. Too quiet.
But I am at last done with the damn snowflake! Total projected word count: 106,500 words. Still to do: move through the scenes as laid out and make them fit the proactive/reactive structure talked about. I think I pretty much have that nailed down, but I'm going to spend a little time going over each scene and making sure it all fits. Some scenes might get combined, and other split apart to fit this mold. Currently, each scene is put together based on one of two things changing: location or characters, since that is the definition of a scene. I think I might have to add a motive to that definition. I don't think I'll have a hard time making the scenes function like I want them to, and I might just do it in the notes section of each scene. I think, now that I've given it more than a moments thought in writing about it, that I won't be changing the scenes as laid out, but I might just virtually split them into sub-scene pairs that function on the proactive/reactive front. Whee! Real progress! Now the easy part: Writing it. Oh, wait a minute... Write in plain sight! Fighting desperately to find the time to work on the scenes. Work has really turned up the pressure on me and I'm finding it hard to squeeze in the time to work on what needs to be in each scene.
I am still working, fear not. It's only on the lines of one or two scenes in a day during a software build. Frustrating. I want to get on with the writing, but I know if I don't get this all straight, now I'm going to miss things, or not introduce them properly and have things pop up at the end without explanation. Don't laugh, it has happened before. I'm on scene eight of sixty. I'd hoped this would go faster. But I am discovering things about the book as I go. So there is a silver lining.
As I go through each scene, I'm making notes of things this scene is for. Sometimes it to show an aspect of a character, other times its to lay the ground work for another scene. ANother good use of a scene is to introduce your world with exposition. Just describe things. I'm doing that a lot in the first few scenes. This will let me use sparser descriptions later in the book. I like how it's forcing me to think about the structure of the story up front. This is going to save me a lot in the re-writes. It will also tell me where the story is lacking. I find I'm referring back to the characters stories to find out how they are going to react to things, or thinking about how I can hint at the secondary stories. I'm enjoying the craft of this a lot. By the way, at this rate it's gonna take me about eight days to get through this step. That went a lot faster than I expected. After the days and days of work that went into creating the long synopsis, it took me less than half an hour to complete! Nine looks a little more complicated, but not as tough as the long synopsis.
Of course, it helps that the entire book is going to be told from only one viewpoint. That makes the whole process easier. The only complication in the entire process was re-combining scenes from all of the sentences in the long synopsis. Several of the lines were really all the same scene. Scene being defined as a unique location and cast of characters. When any of those things change, the scene does as well. This has helped me see I have some massive scenes, and some very light weight ones. It also kinda lets me get a handle on the approximate length of the book. 107,000 pages! Good lord. I have alot of work cut out for me here. Hopefully that estimate is on the high side (and there is some indication of that in the scene length estimates). Gonna have a celebratory homebrew (an Imperial Oaked Coffee Stout, if you must know) this evening! Until next time, Write in Plain Sight! Wow! That took a while. Cranked out almost five pages of long synopsis! I had already finished Step Seven to get step five done, so in one fell swoop I am farther along in the snowflake than I have ever been before.
I'm not sure how I am going to do step eight. I need to list all of the scenes in the book I am going to write. I don't think in scenes, though. I think in outlines. I know what scenes I need from the outline, not from the synopsis. I can import my synoipsis directly into the step eight, but not entirely sure how will that will work. It breaks it up by sentence, and each sentence in the synopsis is not a scene. Perhaps I will do the outline then list the scenes out from there. Raise a beer for me (or the beverage of your choice) this 4th of July for me! Until next time, write in plain sight! Some people have problems creating a plot. Most writers I know of don't. Some do. Some of the best ametuer writes I know have a huge problem creating a plot for their novels or short stories. Others give them away by the bucketful. What gives? I short, I don't know. I do have a method, though, that I am going to share with you. It might not work for you. It might. Give it a try and let me know. Anyway, on to the method. It all starts with a mind map (follow the link if you don't know what that is). I start it with a genre sometimes (steampunk, fantasy) or a description of a painting or drawing. From the mess that spews from my subconscious there (my muse, as it were) I draw a story statement. For example, my story statement for The Tomb of the Vampire Princess Sword I got: Airship captain struggles to prevent mysterious weapon from beig used to destroy the empire. That is a pretty good, short summary of a plot idea. Now the fun part. I firmly believe that a good, rousing story has a very mechanical flow. I mean three disasters and an ending. In the three act structure, the first disasters starts the hero along a the path (and should occur very early in the book after the introduction of the major character(s). In my case, the first disaster hits in the very first chapter.
The second disaster should hit near the beginning of the second act, and the third should hit at the end. The ending should wrap up the book. Not gonna say right now what these things are in this book. I may actually have four or five disasters. Depends on how you count them. Sub-plots, you know. I've seen at least two other methods to generate plot ideas. I don't use them nearly as often as I use the mind map, but sometimes they can be very useful to me to come up with the disasters. I'll talk about them in a later post. Write in plain sight! I'm not sure how other writers create characters. I have read how other writers struggle to create characters that are believable, or interesting (hopefully both!). I've watched other author's yell at the characters they are writing about, or complain that the characters don't want to do what they feel the plot needs them to do.
I've never been blessed (or cursed!) by any of this. Over the years I've come up with a way to create characters that are interesting, and drive the story forward. I think it's an amalgam of several writing methods I've glommed onto over the many years I've spent trying to write. Would you like to know what my secret is? Tune in next time for ... ... just kidding! I simple create characters by stereo type. I take a typical person with an occupation, and give them at least two conflicting personality quirks and watch them squirm. For instance, in The Tomb of the Vampire Princess Sword the main characters, Captain John Blackstone is defined by several characters quirks: He is shy around women, he wants desperately to prove he is worth something outside his family heritage, he is in love with his navigator, he believes that a man is what he does, not how is born, and he still thinks that nobles are born to lead, he is deathly afraid of heights, and he is an airship captain.. In short, this guy is one messed up individual. VIllains get the same treatment. After all, they aren't villains to themselves. Take Basil Rathborn. He's a Raptor from the Ascendancy. He loves a good con. He strongly believes that humans are happiest and best served when they serve the Ascendancy. He believes that might makes right, except when the might belongs to someone else. He thinks he is smarter than everyone else. He values loyalty. He will use anyone to accomplish his tasks. Again, this guy practically writes himself! Anyway, I hope you at least ind this amusing. Write in plain sight! |