Plotting
The Painted Garden never happened. But I'm happy to report that I've seen the original fresco in an exhibition about Pompeii in Munich a couple of weeks ago. It's not the same exhibition as the one in the British Museum, but it was stunning for several reasons. The beauty of the artwork is sublime, and some of the pieces clearly spoke of different ideas of what's acceptable/fashionable to protray in art. But that would take up a post of its own.
So what I wrote instead last November is my own version of 50 Shades of Grey.
Wellll.
Not quite, but the principle is the same. I took a setting and the main character and wrote his backstory. I wrote about him as a teenager and what turned him into the man he is on the show. (It's the fantaastic BRoadchurch, in case you were wondering.) Right now, xebgoc helps me edit it, and I'm editing it twice. Once to clean it up and make it ready to be posted, and once more to simplify the story and language so my 2nd year pupils can read a novel that wasn't pared down or written with an instructional aim in mind.
I'm contradicting myself a bit here. Of course it's pared down. I edit out one of the supporting plots because that's not suitable for their young minds. Some of the editing out requires rewriting of these passages from one of the remaining two pov character's pov. I tried to limit this to a minimum because editing is hard enough as it is. Also, I have to add annotations for the new vocabulary that I can't work around.
What I did when I started to write this fic was plot it like a planner, rather than the pantser I normally am. Or used to be. I found last November that planning helps a lot when I've had a busy day and just want to sit down and escape from it all to my fictional world. Opening Scrivener to an outline with a clear synopsis of the scene I am about to write worked wonders. I could delve right in instead of procrastinating and/or suffering horror vacui.
In April I'm going to do that again, with a "proper" piece of fanfic this time. I've decided that April and July are for fanfic, while November will remain my original fic-writing month. There's one simple reason: I have all summer to plan, plot and, most importantly, do my homework. This is the reason why the Pompeii story didn't happen. I just didn't have enough time to do all the research the story required. And I love my research, even though only a tip of this iceberg will eventually make it into the story itself.
So in preparation for April, I've come across Jami Gold's blog. She has worksheets for writers, adapted from an idea by Michael Hauge, that combines the character's arc and inner journey with the plot. I used that for my November fic and it was genius. Now I've come across writershelpingwriters.net, who have a brilliant section about character development and its link to plot. They dig deeply into a character's past, his wound and how it affects him, and how that, in turn, gives the character even more depth.
In exploring the character's past, his motivation and beliefs. I've managed to work out pretty much the plot of the story by answering all the questions about Identity (the persona he presents to the world) and Essence (the person he really is -- and needs to become by the end of the novel. Or not, depending on where you want to go). And what's even more, I found a worksheet for the romantic thread, which closely links the fictional couple and explores how they interact, how their Identity and Essence play together or against each other, hhow they can draw the Essence out of each other.
I've ended up with a spiral-bound workbook full of character charts and plot plans. I'll skip the character charts for the Doctor and Rose (mostly), but I'll definitely use them for my original characters. While at first I was afraid of restricting myself too much with filling in all these charts and answering the questions I've reached a point now where I see the benefit of it.
The plotting was done in two days and I had no problems at all making it sound and logical. Hopefully, there won't be any plotholes because all the events are clearly linked to the main characters and their needs and reactions. And if I've got a better idea while writing or they run away with me (which I love!) I think I'll still be flexible enough to adapt. I always have.
The only thing I won't do again is write individual scenes. That has messed up my pacing; I'm doing my best to work around it now, particularly with the kids' edition. It's easier there, because whole scenes have to go and I find myself rearranging the order of the sccenes. Which of course made me wonder if the adult version wouldn't benefit from a similar approach, but I've realised that with one supporting plot missing, the kids' version is a different story. So there. In future, I'll return to writing whole chapters of about the same length. If there's one thing writing fan fiction has taught me it's pacing and adding cliff hangers when necessary.
So what I wrote instead last November is my own version of 50 Shades of Grey.
Wellll.
Not quite, but the principle is the same. I took a setting and the main character and wrote his backstory. I wrote about him as a teenager and what turned him into the man he is on the show. (It's the fantaastic BRoadchurch, in case you were wondering.) Right now, xebgoc helps me edit it, and I'm editing it twice. Once to clean it up and make it ready to be posted, and once more to simplify the story and language so my 2nd year pupils can read a novel that wasn't pared down or written with an instructional aim in mind.
I'm contradicting myself a bit here. Of course it's pared down. I edit out one of the supporting plots because that's not suitable for their young minds. Some of the editing out requires rewriting of these passages from one of the remaining two pov character's pov. I tried to limit this to a minimum because editing is hard enough as it is. Also, I have to add annotations for the new vocabulary that I can't work around.
What I did when I started to write this fic was plot it like a planner, rather than the pantser I normally am. Or used to be. I found last November that planning helps a lot when I've had a busy day and just want to sit down and escape from it all to my fictional world. Opening Scrivener to an outline with a clear synopsis of the scene I am about to write worked wonders. I could delve right in instead of procrastinating and/or suffering horror vacui.
In April I'm going to do that again, with a "proper" piece of fanfic this time. I've decided that April and July are for fanfic, while November will remain my original fic-writing month. There's one simple reason: I have all summer to plan, plot and, most importantly, do my homework. This is the reason why the Pompeii story didn't happen. I just didn't have enough time to do all the research the story required. And I love my research, even though only a tip of this iceberg will eventually make it into the story itself.
So in preparation for April, I've come across Jami Gold's blog. She has worksheets for writers, adapted from an idea by Michael Hauge, that combines the character's arc and inner journey with the plot. I used that for my November fic and it was genius. Now I've come across writershelpingwriters.net, who have a brilliant section about character development and its link to plot. They dig deeply into a character's past, his wound and how it affects him, and how that, in turn, gives the character even more depth.
In exploring the character's past, his motivation and beliefs. I've managed to work out pretty much the plot of the story by answering all the questions about Identity (the persona he presents to the world) and Essence (the person he really is -- and needs to become by the end of the novel. Or not, depending on where you want to go). And what's even more, I found a worksheet for the romantic thread, which closely links the fictional couple and explores how they interact, how their Identity and Essence play together or against each other, hhow they can draw the Essence out of each other.
I've ended up with a spiral-bound workbook full of character charts and plot plans. I'll skip the character charts for the Doctor and Rose (mostly), but I'll definitely use them for my original characters. While at first I was afraid of restricting myself too much with filling in all these charts and answering the questions I've reached a point now where I see the benefit of it.
The plotting was done in two days and I had no problems at all making it sound and logical. Hopefully, there won't be any plotholes because all the events are clearly linked to the main characters and their needs and reactions. And if I've got a better idea while writing or they run away with me (which I love!) I think I'll still be flexible enough to adapt. I always have.
The only thing I won't do again is write individual scenes. That has messed up my pacing; I'm doing my best to work around it now, particularly with the kids' edition. It's easier there, because whole scenes have to go and I find myself rearranging the order of the sccenes. Which of course made me wonder if the adult version wouldn't benefit from a similar approach, but I've realised that with one supporting plot missing, the kids' version is a different story. So there. In future, I'll return to writing whole chapters of about the same length. If there's one thing writing fan fiction has taught me it's pacing and adding cliff hangers when necessary.