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| Well, I should be practicing guitar as I only have a few hours before Tez and James come over and lesson is tomorrow, but in my infinite capacity to generate ceaseless amounts of bullshit, I'm posting here instead. Afterwards, I may cut my nails . . . you know how it goes. Anyway, it's the 26th October today. NaNo starts a week yesterday. I now have an issue plan, detailing what's going to happen in each issue and what's going on each splash page. It generated a new character, Mr. St.Stephens. He needs a little work, I think. He's my side-line antagonist for Issue #4. I mean, he's a one-shot bad-guy that's more of a plot device than a person, and there's no shame in that. He's the one that introduces the whole idea of angels and higher things going on, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. But, all the same, I don't want him to be a cardboard cut out. I mean, for the people who don't read comics and can't get into that whole thing, I don't want to leave them feeling cheated. I mean, this is a book, and not a comic, after all. It needs to read like a novel and not a comic. I'm sure I can do it, just with the way I've set up issues and everything, I have to be careful. It's something I need to keep an eye on. I want this to be serious, you know, intellectual stuff. Not some sort of cheap fan boy thing. Anyone can do that. I'm not a huge comics person, after all. I just like that theatricality you get in Batman. Anyway, I shall think some more on Mr. St.Stephens. Get an angle on him. Planning out the issues has helped, I think. It's not so much detail that I'm just hoping from point to point when writing, but it's enough so that I know where I'm going, where I have to get to at any given time. With a bit of luck, it'll both keep me writing and keep me in check. About 18,000 words an issue gives me about 162,000 words at the end of the novel. Gives me some wiggle room in the dub and a finite target to get to. It also means that, to fit the 135,000 I have in mind for the final piece, I only have to lose around 3,000 from each issue - get them down to 15,000 a piece. As each one has it's own self-contained storyline, that shouldn't be too hard. Mind you, it's easy for me to say all this now, of course . . . Also, more good news: I've found Pandora. I wanted a play list that was in the same vein as Workingman's Blues and Nattie Moore from Modern Times, and found my own supplies of music sadly lacking. Pandora is an on-line radio station, and you type in the names of a few songs you like, and it goes through it's databanks and finds songs with similar characteristics. Could I wish for anything else? So, anyway, I'm listening to that and building up my station for November. It's good stuff, so far. The only problem I've found so far is that it randomly stops playing every so often, but if you skip to the next track, it plays again. I've only tried it once, but it worked that one time. The interface is smooth and easy to use, which is the nicest thing I can say about anything, really. It's easy and it works. What more can you want? I think that's pretty much everything. Damnation. What's the next step on the Snowflake? "Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These 'character synopses' should tell the story from the point of view of each character." Have I done that already? Is that what my Step 2 was? What's Step 6? "Now take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the story to a four-page synopsis." Well, my issue plan is four and a half pages. I guess that's the same thing. Isn't it . . . ? Step 7? "Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birth date, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the story?" That could be important. Stuff on Jene's and Andrea's history, and physical appearances for everyone would probably help. Ages, too. I could slip that into my profiles for Step 2. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just do physical descriptions. I know the salient points of people's histories, and I can warp the rest around the story. Maybe I'll do that. But I think physical descriptions would be helpful. That shouldn't take long. An hour? Tops? Probably. Do I need to do anything after that? "Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell." ??? Aware though I am of the realities of selling novels, something inside me rebels at the thought of selling a novel before it's written. If you have enough to sell it, where's the fun in writing it? Where's the spontaneity and energy you can only get from fighting with yourself and caffeine? Maybe I do still have some artist principles left. That's a bit of a surprise. There's still a tiny slither of the 16 year-old purest left. Wow. Who'd have thought it? Good thing or bad thing? I guess we'll see. Anyways, step 8 . . . "Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a glance, and it's easy to move scenes around to reorder things. " Maybe I'll do that. I don't know. This guy's written many a book, so I should listen to him. But then, as artists, we're going to go our separate ways at some point. I was quite happy with my issue plan until I read about this. Truth be told . . . It's Thursday today. Parents are arriving tomorrow, and staying the weekend . . . can I do this over the Monday and Tuesday? Chances are against it. It's a big project. Detailing each scene . . . ? Food for thought . . . Anything else I should be thinking about? "Step 9) (Optional. I don't do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene." Leaves me with a 50 page synopsis. No chance. Not in a few days. "Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the story." That sounds an important step. I'll make sure to do that one :) "You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no. This is the fun part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who's in the burning rowboat? This is the time to figure it out! But it's fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of the story works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and you can write relatively fast." It must be because I'm English. What was it Scott said? Nothing can be considered an achievement unless it's suffered for . . . something like that, anyhoo. That old English attitude seems stuck in me. 'They cheated by being better equipped, better trained and better organised than us'. There we go, one of mine that sums up the English attitude. 'The worth of an achievement can be measured by the pain endured to reach it.' Another one of mine, I think. The idea of planning Butterflies to the point where it's easy to write sticks in my craw for some reason. It's cheating. You know? I mean, there's got to be a measure of pain to every great achievement, right? That's what gives it that coppery tension that bites at the back of the throat. You can't just, you know, synthesis that. I mean, NASA planned and planned and planned, but there was still a chance that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins weren't going to come back. Hillery trained and trained, but you'd still make a lot of money betting on him against the mountain. I'm not saying Butterflies has to be one of the peaks of human civilisation, just that it kind of defeats the purpose of doing it if I know everything perfectly. Why climb Everest for real when you can do it on the holodeck without fear of dying? Because it's there. Anyway, I need the loo now. | ||||||||||
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