Scaffolding
I think I promised I'd mention scaffolding.
I know, crazy monkey, random... and yes that's true. It's just a... way of thinking that I wasn't even aware of until last week, so I really would like to share.
I had a one-to-one workshop with Alan (Bisset - my writing tutor) and we were talking about something I'd submitted for him to read. It was a section of the novel I've been trying to entice out of the nether regions of my brain for about five years, that I'm having real difficulty progressing with. I'm stuck, I need all the help I can get.
What I came away with was a whole new way of looking at what I'm writing - and a realisation that some arbitrary word count of 60 or 70 or 80 thousand words does not a novel make. Incidentally, NaNo may be a great idea, and an interesting challenge, but I suspect the end product is not going to be 50 thousand words of my best stuff. Anyway. I was made to realise a number of very useful things that I hadn't known before:
(1) As far as novel writing is concerned, I am a complete and utter newbie.
(2) I'll make mistakes. I'll get over them. I'll find new ways to do things.
(3) I need to ask more questions about what I'm writing - like, "who is this story about?"
(4) I shouldn't be scared of editing large chunks of material out. Not everything is necessarily going to make it.
(5) Writing yourself "in" is not a bad thing. You know, like getting "in" to character
(6) It's OK to write scaffolding.
Scaffolding.
So, my new definition of scaffolding is this - the written structure surrounding the "finished" text. The text can't be written without its support, however, it can't be fully appreciated as the finished article until the scaffolding has been removed.
OK, that doesn't sound so profound, but it changed the way I'm now looking at what I already have written. I have an arbitrary wordcount of approximately 25 thousand words. Most of which is probably scaffolding.
Looks like I might have my work cut out for me...
I know, crazy monkey, random... and yes that's true. It's just a... way of thinking that I wasn't even aware of until last week, so I really would like to share.
I had a one-to-one workshop with Alan (Bisset - my writing tutor) and we were talking about something I'd submitted for him to read. It was a section of the novel I've been trying to entice out of the nether regions of my brain for about five years, that I'm having real difficulty progressing with. I'm stuck, I need all the help I can get.
What I came away with was a whole new way of looking at what I'm writing - and a realisation that some arbitrary word count of 60 or 70 or 80 thousand words does not a novel make. Incidentally, NaNo may be a great idea, and an interesting challenge, but I suspect the end product is not going to be 50 thousand words of my best stuff. Anyway. I was made to realise a number of very useful things that I hadn't known before:
(1) As far as novel writing is concerned, I am a complete and utter newbie.
(2) I'll make mistakes. I'll get over them. I'll find new ways to do things.
(3) I need to ask more questions about what I'm writing - like, "who is this story about?"
(4) I shouldn't be scared of editing large chunks of material out. Not everything is necessarily going to make it.
(5) Writing yourself "in" is not a bad thing. You know, like getting "in" to character
(6) It's OK to write scaffolding.
Scaffolding.
So, my new definition of scaffolding is this - the written structure surrounding the "finished" text. The text can't be written without its support, however, it can't be fully appreciated as the finished article until the scaffolding has been removed.
OK, that doesn't sound so profound, but it changed the way I'm now looking at what I already have written. I have an arbitrary wordcount of approximately 25 thousand words. Most of which is probably scaffolding.
Looks like I might have my work cut out for me...