Monday, May 3, 2010

When Writing Sucks--well, never!

But when I get ideas coming at me like a herd of buffalo, I have to do something to corral these ideas, write them down, of course, but where are they going to go?

I do write these ideas down, sometimes it's basic bones, but a lot of times it's dialogue, or it's a whole scene. I wish I had an eternity to just work on this. But I have to wait until the weekend, and then when I'm able I jump into it.

I had these ideas or scenes and they were a mish mash of things and so I had to work on them. But I wasn't ready to write these scenes down into the novel itself. I have to go with the "notes" document. That way, no matter in what sequence I write the scene, I just insert a manual break at the end and go on to the next scene.

But how to organize them?

I'm a visual person. I have to see it sort of in front of me to get an idea of where I want it. If the scenes are such that they won't follow one another, I use the index card thing.

But if it's a chapter with several scenes, or two chapters, and I want to see where each of them will land, I take a sheet of legal sized paper, draw a line down the center of it's length and somewhere at the top, if there's going to be one or two chapters these scenes are covering, I leave a space for those chapter headings.

Using the Sharpie is best. It's bold and keeps me focused on where things have to be.

I keep my scene descriptions brief, but they can be longer than the note cards, so I work on this. Writing each scene on either side of the line. And then, when I'm done, if it's a little out of whack, I draw arrows from one scene to the one that needs to come next.

Sometimes only the note card works when the scenes are so far ahead of what you are working on now.

And at the moment, that's what I'm facing. I have some scenes that will be coming up next but I'm not certain where to place them, or if they will fit into this book, or must come next.

Anyone working on a series, or a trillogy, (or have done so), you have any ideas or posts I can look at give me a yell. I could use a little advice.

4 comments:

  1. Hi ya Lorelei! I think I did this right this time! Your blog is looking very cool and I enjoy visiting it everyday. Keep up the excellent work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, John! Cool!
    Yeah, thanks. Thank you for your support.

    And I can see I've a new member who joined my followers. Katie Salidas wrote "Immortalis Carpe Noctem", and her book can be found on her site.

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  3. When writing a series I keep a 3 ring notebook with all my information on the characters, character arcs, outline, notes, and everything random. That way its organized and at my fingertips. When writing a single book I just use a bound notebook and jot down everything in it. Without those I'd be lost!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The three ring notebook might work better than a notebook that I can't arrange the pages in.

    Always gotta have the notes, and other junk to keep myself straight. Character profiles always in a notebook.

    I do like the character arc idea you had on your post. I'll have to try that.(:
    Thanks Heater!

    ReplyDelete

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