Showing posts with label outlining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outlining. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The Language of the Unheard
I more or less finished "North to the Klondike." It needs a bunch more work but the main story frame is out on paper. I started the 'zombie' story, "The Language of the Unheard" on Sunday and right now I am eight scenes and 10,000 words in. The extensive outlining that I did on notecards has really been helping me. I just went through and made one notecard for each scene and on that card I listed the plot points and details that needed to make it into each scene. Then as I go along, I'm still creating a lot of the story but I'm not missing anything important to the story. It's really helped me reveal my character's backstory (which is one of her main motivations for this story) a little at a time. And as I go into the five digit word counts, where I start to second guess myself, I know that I have a good plan ahead of me and if I just follow what I've laid out, the story will come together in the end. So far I feel really good about the story and if I can keep my words per scene up at this same level, I'll have the longest book I've ever written. I'm striving for at least 80,000 words but we'll see how that plays out. I have twenty more days until I start school for summer quarter so we'll see how far I can get by then. But even after school starts, I won't be working so I should still have some time to work on it.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
I do everything fast
There is a moment of my childhood that sticks with me vividly. I was probably about eight and my mom and sisters and I were visiting some friends. They had a trampoline and one of the requirements was that you had to take your shoes off to play on it. So my shoes were off and I was jumping and then I needed to go back in the house for some reason. I got off the trampoline and I was tying my shoes back on and I overheard the friends' mom say to my mom, "Wow, she ties her shoes so fast!" I laughed to myself because it really wasn't that fast but then my mom replied, "Yeah, she does everything fast. She talks fast, she walks fast."
Over the years since then I've realized that this has really defined my life. I do everything fast. I still walk at twice the rate of normal people, I talk so fast most people have trouble keeping up. I think faster than most people so I have to back track a lot to explain my train of thought. I can read a standard novel in about four hours. I type fast. If you tell me that something should take about two hours to complete, my first thought is, "I bet I can do it in half that time."
This is both beneficial and harmful. On one hand, school is a breeze for me because homework literally takes me half as long as everyone else. But on the flip side, if something does take as long for me to complete as it does most people, I lose interest and get frustrated. I guess you could say that my attention span is very short as a result of how fast I operate.
Case in point. On Saturday I was sitting on my bed chatting with my boyfriend when I decided that I wanted to come up with an idea for another novel. I spent that day brainstorming, Sunday researching and Monday and Tuesday outlining. Now it's Wednesday and I have a full outline, several character sketches, a complete idea of my plot and subplots, three paragraph summaries of the plot and one full-page summery. Five days after coming up with the initial idea for my novel, I'm ready to start writing.
Do I realize that planning and outlining a novel is supposed to take months or years to do? Yes. Do I realize that my plan to have the first draft of this novel done by the end of the month is ridiculous? Absolutely. Do I honestly think I'm going to pull it off? Definitely. I have to, because by the middle of next month, I will have lost all interest in this idea.
So I am going to go take a shower, maybe do some dishes and then I'm going to start writing my novel which I am currently calling, "North to the Klondike." I'm aiming for a final word count of 75,000.
Yay for being unemployed!
Over the years since then I've realized that this has really defined my life. I do everything fast. I still walk at twice the rate of normal people, I talk so fast most people have trouble keeping up. I think faster than most people so I have to back track a lot to explain my train of thought. I can read a standard novel in about four hours. I type fast. If you tell me that something should take about two hours to complete, my first thought is, "I bet I can do it in half that time." This is both beneficial and harmful. On one hand, school is a breeze for me because homework literally takes me half as long as everyone else. But on the flip side, if something does take as long for me to complete as it does most people, I lose interest and get frustrated. I guess you could say that my attention span is very short as a result of how fast I operate.
Case in point. On Saturday I was sitting on my bed chatting with my boyfriend when I decided that I wanted to come up with an idea for another novel. I spent that day brainstorming, Sunday researching and Monday and Tuesday outlining. Now it's Wednesday and I have a full outline, several character sketches, a complete idea of my plot and subplots, three paragraph summaries of the plot and one full-page summery. Five days after coming up with the initial idea for my novel, I'm ready to start writing.
Do I realize that planning and outlining a novel is supposed to take months or years to do? Yes. Do I realize that my plan to have the first draft of this novel done by the end of the month is ridiculous? Absolutely. Do I honestly think I'm going to pull it off? Definitely. I have to, because by the middle of next month, I will have lost all interest in this idea.
So I am going to go take a shower, maybe do some dishes and then I'm going to start writing my novel which I am currently calling, "North to the Klondike." I'm aiming for a final word count of 75,000.
Yay for being unemployed!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Outline complete!
So many apologies for the lack of blog posts lately. I have no excuse other than that I've just been doing other things.
So I finished my outline for NaNoWriMo. It's quite exciting because I had experienced some moments of doubt as I wasn't sure I was going to be able to figure out the novel. But I've got a plot, a sub-plot and I'm working on planning out some more fun, well-rounded characters. Since that's mostly what I've been working on, I thought I'd fill you in on the details of how I plan a novel.
1. It starts with an idea. One beautiful, shining nugget of an idea. It will pop into my head randomly and I will immediately get very excited and start running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.
2. As soon as I get the idea, more ideas start to come. I start to see some characters in my head that could work, and I begin to feel a tone for the book coming on. At this point I am euphoric and nothing could ever bring me down.
3. Now I decide to write. This could be the same day that I get the idea, or months or even years later. I'll begin by writing a short synopsis of the idea, sort of summing up the main points. Then I slowly begin to tease out the details.
4. I do a bullet list of an outline, listing points that I want to make, scenes that I want to include and characters that I want to introduce. Then I put the list more or less in chronological order. This is where the hard part comes in. Once I have part of my idea down, I begin to realize that there are huge holes or gaps in the story, where the characters jump from J to P without stopping at K, L, M, N or O first. This is frustrating because often I have no idea what these letters are going to be. But often I find that if I just let my brain work over these problems during my day to day activities, as long as I keep them in the back of my mind, the solutions usually slowly come to me, one day at a time.
5. This is also an exciting time because great, perfect ideas will come to and eventually the book really seems to be coming together. Now I take my rough bullet list and turn it into an actual, beautiful outline, with Roman numerals and everything. I fill the list in and put things where they go. It is usually at this point that I find my plot holes, and realize (in the case of this novel) that one character can not be hero, villain, and be killed, so I will need a few more characters.
6. Once the outline is done, I go back through all my notes and miscellaneous questions and comments to myself and make sure that I haven't forgotten anything that I wanted to include.
7. At this point I usually begin writing the book itself, but in the case of this particular novel, I still have over 17 days until NaNo starts so now I'll have to content myself with possibly picking up a few more subplots, and creating some more characters.
So it's quite a relief to have the outline done, because now I know that the book can be pulled off, it's like planning a trip for months and finally getting your vacation approved at work, making your hotel reservations and booking the flight. It's all coming together now and I think it's really doable. I have my road map and now I'm ready for the trip to begin!
Bring it on, November!
So I finished my outline for NaNoWriMo. It's quite exciting because I had experienced some moments of doubt as I wasn't sure I was going to be able to figure out the novel. But I've got a plot, a sub-plot and I'm working on planning out some more fun, well-rounded characters. Since that's mostly what I've been working on, I thought I'd fill you in on the details of how I plan a novel.
1. It starts with an idea. One beautiful, shining nugget of an idea. It will pop into my head randomly and I will immediately get very excited and start running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.
2. As soon as I get the idea, more ideas start to come. I start to see some characters in my head that could work, and I begin to feel a tone for the book coming on. At this point I am euphoric and nothing could ever bring me down.
3. Now I decide to write. This could be the same day that I get the idea, or months or even years later. I'll begin by writing a short synopsis of the idea, sort of summing up the main points. Then I slowly begin to tease out the details.
4. I do a bullet list of an outline, listing points that I want to make, scenes that I want to include and characters that I want to introduce. Then I put the list more or less in chronological order. This is where the hard part comes in. Once I have part of my idea down, I begin to realize that there are huge holes or gaps in the story, where the characters jump from J to P without stopping at K, L, M, N or O first. This is frustrating because often I have no idea what these letters are going to be. But often I find that if I just let my brain work over these problems during my day to day activities, as long as I keep them in the back of my mind, the solutions usually slowly come to me, one day at a time.
5. This is also an exciting time because great, perfect ideas will come to and eventually the book really seems to be coming together. Now I take my rough bullet list and turn it into an actual, beautiful outline, with Roman numerals and everything. I fill the list in and put things where they go. It is usually at this point that I find my plot holes, and realize (in the case of this novel) that one character can not be hero, villain, and be killed, so I will need a few more characters.
6. Once the outline is done, I go back through all my notes and miscellaneous questions and comments to myself and make sure that I haven't forgotten anything that I wanted to include.
7. At this point I usually begin writing the book itself, but in the case of this particular novel, I still have over 17 days until NaNo starts so now I'll have to content myself with possibly picking up a few more subplots, and creating some more characters.
So it's quite a relief to have the outline done, because now I know that the book can be pulled off, it's like planning a trip for months and finally getting your vacation approved at work, making your hotel reservations and booking the flight. It's all coming together now and I think it's really doable. I have my road map and now I'm ready for the trip to begin!
Bring it on, November!
(Comic used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at http://www.inkygirl.com)
Sunday, October 3, 2010
28 days 'til NaNo
So since we're on the final month before NaNoWriMo, I figured maybe I need to start working out the details, or some of them, of my book. Some people write with no structure, some people write with every detail planned in advance, and I am somewhere in the middle. I have to plan enough that when I get to the difficult to write scenes, I know where I'm going with it, where I need to get to, and this lets me push through to the next important part. With no structure, or not enough structure, I get to this point and either go way off track, changing the entire direction of my book, or give up, because I can't figure out how to get where I want my book to end up.
But, on the flipside, I don't stick to a plan religiously. My outlines usually involve a four or five word heading summing up each chapter or so, with fifteen or so chapters per novel. Within each heading are two or three one or two word bullet points reminding me what to include within that subject. But while I'm writing, I'll usually think of more things to put in and include those, and also realize that some things no longer work or make sense, and leave those out. I also rewrite the outline while I'm working on the book, adding things in later in the book that I'll need to put in based on what I'm currently writing.
This novel is somewhat of a new challenge for me in a couple of ways. This will be my third novel over all and about my four-billionth story, so I have some precedence to work on. But this will be my first time writing a first person story from the perspective of a man. Also, when I'm coming up with ideas for books, I generally come up with some details, or specific story ideas that I want to include and then build a book around it. With this one, I came up with a very general idea, and and working on the specifics at the moment, which is somewhat backwards from my usual. So it is somewhat difficult for me, but also exciting.
I'm also working on creating some very dynamic characters for this story, since I think character sympathy is going to be very important for the movement of the story. Characters are always my weak point and I find it hard to avoid stereotypes when creating characters.
Another challenge/opportunity that I'm taking is that I'm creating this book as though the basis for the story was a national/international story, well known, and now the main person involved is writing the book from his perspective. So that's a bit different from just a regular novel. But I'm excited and am trying to work out some of the middle filler to get me from A to B. I'll keep you posted!
But, on the flipside, I don't stick to a plan religiously. My outlines usually involve a four or five word heading summing up each chapter or so, with fifteen or so chapters per novel. Within each heading are two or three one or two word bullet points reminding me what to include within that subject. But while I'm writing, I'll usually think of more things to put in and include those, and also realize that some things no longer work or make sense, and leave those out. I also rewrite the outline while I'm working on the book, adding things in later in the book that I'll need to put in based on what I'm currently writing.
This novel is somewhat of a new challenge for me in a couple of ways. This will be my third novel over all and about my four-billionth story, so I have some precedence to work on. But this will be my first time writing a first person story from the perspective of a man. Also, when I'm coming up with ideas for books, I generally come up with some details, or specific story ideas that I want to include and then build a book around it. With this one, I came up with a very general idea, and and working on the specifics at the moment, which is somewhat backwards from my usual. So it is somewhat difficult for me, but also exciting.
I'm also working on creating some very dynamic characters for this story, since I think character sympathy is going to be very important for the movement of the story. Characters are always my weak point and I find it hard to avoid stereotypes when creating characters.
Another challenge/opportunity that I'm taking is that I'm creating this book as though the basis for the story was a national/international story, well known, and now the main person involved is writing the book from his perspective. So that's a bit different from just a regular novel. But I'm excited and am trying to work out some of the middle filler to get me from A to B. I'll keep you posted!
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