From notes to novel
All this month Justine Larbalestier has been answering questions about the process of writing from her readers. It's so interesting reading about others' processes: sometimes it's a relief when someone has as one-legged-rooster-riding-a-rocking-chair messy an approach as I have; other times it's fascinating when someone has a process that obviously works, but seems totally alien to my brain.
Anyway, she shared this question, as the person's process differs from hers so much:
How do you organize all the jumbles of idea generating, plot generating, character generating, and so on, in order to see what you have, so you can then take it and put it all together somehow? In my example, I have a 100 page document focused on one story (one novel) only. It has snippets of scenes, plot ideas, potential background for characters, what ifs and opposing what ifs, outlines and ideas for character’s backgrounds, and so on and so forth. Again, it’s specifically focused on one novel and one story idea, but it also includes multiple options for that novel and story idea etc. I’m finding that I can’t move forward with structuring this story without knowing what I even have, i.e. being able to SEE it so that I can make CHOICES about all of the above. I have never quite seen this problem addressed anywhere. I’ve seen info. on generating plot and characters, generating ideas, how to outline, how to write a synopsis etc., but no one tells you what to do with the disorganized mess you create when you’ve done all of the above. How do YOU do it? And have you heard of genius ways others have done it? How do you take your idea-generating mess and turn it into something cohesive to work from?
If you've got an answer for this person, jump right to comments either here or at Justine's blog when this question goes live: below the cut is my own answer.
Answer, not advice. What works for one is not guaranteed to work for all. (And what works for one in this project might not work in that project.)
When I was ten, it was a tremendous relief to me to realize that if I wasn't going to show stories to teachers anyway, since they always disapproved if there was magic and flying kids in the story, then I didn't have to write them short. The first several novels just wrote themselves. But along about ninth grade I began to run into problems that I now know are structural. I not only had no method, I had no vocabulary for this stuff. All I knew was, for whatever reason, the hindbrain didn't always cooperate and do all the work.
I tried the index card route (that was how teachers told you to organize papers). Index cards were still too scattered--I couldn't get them into an order that worked, because how do you put parallel scenes in, do you write on both sides? Bend the card? Hang them in the air? I read an article when I was fourteen or so that said that Jacqueline Susann made index card trees on one wall--I could see at once that that would work, branches being parallel scenes--but hoo boy, I knew what would happen to me if I messed with the walls in our room!
So I bought myself a steno pad, and I thought, if I keep all the ideas on one single page, I can "see" the entire story. I invented what is now call the idea cluster (I'm sure many have invented that for themselves, it's intuitive for so many): start with a central idea, or scene, and proceed from that, adding in why the event happened and what happens next. You follow all the lines connecting the idea balloons, and that gives you at least a rough sequence for your first draft.
But eventually I couldn't confine it all to one page, even using almost microscopic handwriting. So I started breaking out stuff into timelines, character lists, maps of couse, bits of scenes. Those I'd shuffle into order. I'd footnote event lists. Each footnote number would have a corresponding page of stuff, over in the pile of ideas.
The recent project was littered all over my desk, with a major timeline, minor ones, event sequences, maps (including one just for prevailing winds), language and historical notes, and a zillion snapshot images. Then draft after draft of event lists, finally coalescing into what happened in each chapter, noted down the right side of the paper. Left side open for notes. I think I trashed and redid that six times.
So . . . that's all there, but where to begin?
For me, there's always a compelling scene that starts any story idea.
Most of the time if I write that scene--usually the central one in the idea cluster--the rest start to accrete. That scene might not turn out to be the beginning: usually, if a whole lot of backstory insists on being shoveled in, I know I have to go back farther for the actual beginning, but hey, suddenly I have the middle!
But sometimes an idea just isn't ready. The scene sits there, or scenes farther along occur, but not the matter in-between. Sometimes it's a stop-motion frozen scene--I don't know enough to start the action again. I had one project sit for twenty years before I could handle the first draft. It still needs one more draft. I not only needed to learn more writing skills to deal with that story, I also needed life experience. Well, enough of that; there are five "I"s in as many lines, which means I'm probably being a blowhard.
Anyway, she shared this question, as the person's process differs from hers so much:
How do you organize all the jumbles of idea generating, plot generating, character generating, and so on, in order to see what you have, so you can then take it and put it all together somehow? In my example, I have a 100 page document focused on one story (one novel) only. It has snippets of scenes, plot ideas, potential background for characters, what ifs and opposing what ifs, outlines and ideas for character’s backgrounds, and so on and so forth. Again, it’s specifically focused on one novel and one story idea, but it also includes multiple options for that novel and story idea etc. I’m finding that I can’t move forward with structuring this story without knowing what I even have, i.e. being able to SEE it so that I can make CHOICES about all of the above. I have never quite seen this problem addressed anywhere. I’ve seen info. on generating plot and characters, generating ideas, how to outline, how to write a synopsis etc., but no one tells you what to do with the disorganized mess you create when you’ve done all of the above. How do YOU do it? And have you heard of genius ways others have done it? How do you take your idea-generating mess and turn it into something cohesive to work from?
If you've got an answer for this person, jump right to comments either here or at Justine's blog when this question goes live: below the cut is my own answer.
Answer, not advice. What works for one is not guaranteed to work for all. (And what works for one in this project might not work in that project.)
When I was ten, it was a tremendous relief to me to realize that if I wasn't going to show stories to teachers anyway, since they always disapproved if there was magic and flying kids in the story, then I didn't have to write them short. The first several novels just wrote themselves. But along about ninth grade I began to run into problems that I now know are structural. I not only had no method, I had no vocabulary for this stuff. All I knew was, for whatever reason, the hindbrain didn't always cooperate and do all the work.
I tried the index card route (that was how teachers told you to organize papers). Index cards were still too scattered--I couldn't get them into an order that worked, because how do you put parallel scenes in, do you write on both sides? Bend the card? Hang them in the air? I read an article when I was fourteen or so that said that Jacqueline Susann made index card trees on one wall--I could see at once that that would work, branches being parallel scenes--but hoo boy, I knew what would happen to me if I messed with the walls in our room!
So I bought myself a steno pad, and I thought, if I keep all the ideas on one single page, I can "see" the entire story. I invented what is now call the idea cluster (I'm sure many have invented that for themselves, it's intuitive for so many): start with a central idea, or scene, and proceed from that, adding in why the event happened and what happens next. You follow all the lines connecting the idea balloons, and that gives you at least a rough sequence for your first draft.
But eventually I couldn't confine it all to one page, even using almost microscopic handwriting. So I started breaking out stuff into timelines, character lists, maps of couse, bits of scenes. Those I'd shuffle into order. I'd footnote event lists. Each footnote number would have a corresponding page of stuff, over in the pile of ideas.
The recent project was littered all over my desk, with a major timeline, minor ones, event sequences, maps (including one just for prevailing winds), language and historical notes, and a zillion snapshot images. Then draft after draft of event lists, finally coalescing into what happened in each chapter, noted down the right side of the paper. Left side open for notes. I think I trashed and redid that six times.
So . . . that's all there, but where to begin?
For me, there's always a compelling scene that starts any story idea.
Most of the time if I write that scene--usually the central one in the idea cluster--the rest start to accrete. That scene might not turn out to be the beginning: usually, if a whole lot of backstory insists on being shoveled in, I know I have to go back farther for the actual beginning, but hey, suddenly I have the middle!
But sometimes an idea just isn't ready. The scene sits there, or scenes farther along occur, but not the matter in-between. Sometimes it's a stop-motion frozen scene--I don't know enough to start the action again. I had one project sit for twenty years before I could handle the first draft. It still needs one more draft. I not only needed to learn more writing skills to deal with that story, I also needed life experience. Well, enough of that; there are five "I"s in as many lines, which means I'm probably being a blowhard.