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How important is it to have a "plot" set up from the get-go? I don't necessarily mean plot as in "getting the ball rolling" but having a more or less clear "start -> middle -> ending" thought out, or even something basic as "this is gonna be a murder mystery! The victim is X and the killer is Y". Often I find myself just coming up with new settings, worlds or high-end ideas, fleshing them out if they seem worth it and maybe entually coming up with an interesting character (and crew) to bounce off the setting, or a plot hook/scene that would be interesting to explore. I jot down a first draft of whatever scenes comes to mind and... kinda get bogged down when my inspirational zeal runs out of steam or I realize that I'm getting out on thin ice a chapter or so down the original hook. It's a little like mixing a historian's approach, documenting the world and then jumping into "slice-of-life of Rural Gumbistan"-writing. It's a story about nothing!  Not necessarily in that order though, the first couple of times I ran into that problem was what triggered my compulsive world-building to help me fill in the empty spots. It's like having an awesome idea for a scene set in a house... and then realizing that there's nothing outside the front door, so I better fill that in... oh and I need characters too! and something to well, motivate them to... do stuff. It becomes quite overwhelming really, I run out of steam and then a week or two later another idea pops into my head and off I go again. If the previous idea was really good I might just come back to it after 3-6 months, but then it's like going back to a first draft and realizing everything you wrote is kinda rubbish and oh I better fix this part, and this and-  Feels like I need a better approach to this poo poo!
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Jul 28, 2012 21:38
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You put my thoughts into words I dilacked, that's the two approaches (discovery writers versus outliners) I've been bouncing between lately. Although I find that when I'm writing "modern" scenes it's easier to do the discovery thing, as I don't feel pressured by world building as much as when I'm doing something fantasy/sci-fi. I recently read the Preface to Gardens of the Moon redux by Steven Erikson and it gave me an interesting perspective on that matter (haven't read the book yet though so what do I know, maybe it's rubbish). As for drafts (not that I've completed any yet), when I'm in the groove I'll easily poo poo out around 10-20 000 words during a weekend or so of writing, but of course it's all over the place - ideas, names, places, concepts etc scribbled down in one or two documents and a couple of chapters worth of writing in another folder. Collecting some reference pictures to "save" some concept I had in mind or saw in a show or similar for later is part of the ground work. A single picture can tell a thousand words or however it goes? It's bloody true. Especially if I'm doing the "overview" draft and just putting down a few lines for location and scene, having a picture saved with the kind of theme I want helps whenever I get back to flushing it out (going all in with borderline purple prose isn't very helpful to get the story moving during a first draft!) Sometimes I'll draw out a map or do a little art myself to solidify locations or try out designs, backstory concepts either serving as base or coming from that point. I think I've cut-down or merged my various ideas into mainly one pre-medieval (well, kinda) setting, one modern setting and one rough sci-fi setting. Reusing old ideas and wedging them into another, similar, setting that's more flushed out saves some time with the world building and is a pretty good source of new characters I've found (and pro writers with "metaverses" seem to take advantage off as well).
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Jul 29, 2012 23:13
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Speaking of writing boring scenes, how would you go about writing a ... well a "montage" scene? Not necessarily the inspiring kind with  Eye of the Tiger over it, but the more homely/drab kind you might see in some movies where the scene follows the protagonist through an ordinary evening or something else mundane. Not something you might want to spend a lot of time on (See: boring), but might be necessary to set the mood or contrast to following scenes. There's certainly some limitations compared to what a motion picture can do with such a scene (sound obviously, harder to do narration at the same time...). I find that it can be a powerful thing done right but well... I don't have the writing experience to quite know how to approach it properly.
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Aug 9, 2012 17:29
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