Tuesday, October 18, 2005

T Minus 13 Days

So, we're at the 13 day mark. I'm not going to say I'm positive that I can get through all the prewriting I want to so I can sit right down on the first and kick on my novel writing playlist, but I'm certainly getting closer. And I don't feel like I'm not going to make it. Maybe I won't have absolutely everything done, but maybe I plan too much.

So.

Last night I worked through Holly Lilse's Pre-Writing Questions. If you haven't gotten to look at any of her workshops, you might check them out. Not all of her stuff works for me, but a lot of it is designed for fantasy writing, which isn't what I'm doing right now.

I'm also not as visual a thinker as she is, and I don't cluster well. So I did the same questions in an outline format instead. They worked out pretty well, and gave me some insight into things that are going to be helpful I think. I need to go through and do some of the questions for one more character, though, I realized this morning. I left off Tilly's cousin who's going to be her partner in crime through the whole novel. So she'll be good to flesh out a lot more.

I also named everybody. Well, the characters I know about so far. And while the names may not stick, they'll be helpful for when I'm plotting and stuff. It's much easier to write "Peter" rather than "The Biology lab tech Tilly gets a crush on that works with the evil professor" over and over again.

I think tonight I'm going to either work on a five point outline, or characterization. I also might end up bouncing back and forth since I think I've got a handle on a lot of my character elements, but I don't have the details nailed down. So as I'm plotting I might need bits. But, I might get into it and not.

2 comments:

Jana DeLeon said...

I found you, Elly. Great job on the plotting and outlining. Can you let me know how to do that when you're done???? I've got that darned long synopsis to write and heck if I know how the book ends. Darned pantster writing.

Good luck with nanowrimo!

Elly said...

It's me! And you should totally to BIAM with me.

I'm probably going to write up about this tomorrow, but the quick synopsis thing that I use is Kathy Carmichael's: http://www.kathycarmichael.com/synopsis.denver2002.html

(It won't let me do links! Evil thing. :P)

I like how it helps to boil out the important points to hit and then I expand that into an outline. The trick is getting it from an outline into a book.