Begging for help again

[resonant]

You know, occasionally I have a thought, or write a story, or overhear something funny, but mostly it seems that I exist only to ask y'all for help.

So. Who can recommend useful resources on planning/outlining a novel? Books, websites, whatever's been helpful to you.

Comments

[vass]

There's The Snowflake Method. I think a lot of NaNo people use it.

I don't know if it's good advice, but it is advice.

His bio slightly unnerves me:
Randy Ingermanson has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from U.C. Berkeley and has won a number of awards for his novels, including two Christy awards for excellence in Christian fiction. His most recent novel Double Vision is a romantic suspense novel set in a high-tech startup company in San Diego with some startling similarities to the one he used to work at.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

You know Theresa Hayden (making_light), right? IIRC she linked to basically everything you need when writing and publishing. Otherwise I can try to copy/paste you some old bookmarks (if I can still find them).

[vass]

Nitpick: Teresa Nielsen Hayden. She's an editor at Tor, and a lifelong SF fan. http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight

[troutkitty.livejournal.com]

http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/artout.htm

I really love this set of questions. It takes about 1/2 an hour, and by the time you finish, you have a good idea of how it starts, where it's going and how it's going to get there.

[dphearson.livejournal.com]

The Complete Screenwriting Guide, by JM Straczynksi.

This the creator of Babylon Five, and he was the head writer for Murder, She Wrote. He has a section of outlining an dcompleting a novel. He has the hard burden of true experience behind him, and I heartily reccmend his guide.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I was directed here by boniblithe because she knows I have just put into practice a planning method that's working nicely for me, though I was nervous about it to start with.

My problem, I found, was that I had a lot of ideas, some big overarching ones and lots of little detail ideas, and while I could write them all down I had a hard time piecing them altogther into a coherent whole. Also, I think the idea of having to come up with the coherent whole right away was intimidating me, or at least preventing me from writing the best story I could. So I've tried a variety of methods to break it all down into smaller, more manageable chunks in the planning process.

My first attempt at serious plotting was to use cue cards. what I did then was write down what would happen in each chapter, and then add to them as I went along or reorganized them. But honestly that's too much structure to start with, I think. I had lots of ideas but I needed them to have a place to grow, and hand-written cards weren't the best for growing. Too many limits.

So I downloaded a program called Idea Knot (http://www.stayatplay.com/ideaknot/). What this is is essentially the cue cards, but more fluid. It lets you jot down ideas and then create categories to put them in. And you can have one idea in multiple categories. So at first I just wrote down elements I liked, scenes I wanted to write. At the very beginning it was disconcerting, because all the pieces were there but I couldn't picture them as a whole, but I pushed through that and just kept noting the things I liked about the story as it sat in my head.

And then I started categories for elements of the story that I saw growing stronger, and added ideas and plot points to those. And then I created a category for character sketches, and collected ideas or general musing about particular characters. And once i'd been doing that for a few weeks, I started to get more serious and created categories for chapters. I processed all those ideas and characters into a chronology, editing them and adding ideas as I went along. And then finally I created another category for real working chapters, this one without all the tangents and musing, just this and then that and that this other thing, a sort of recipe to follow to get that chapter out, the main events. Since I had the overview taken care of, I did the very nitty gritty planning for the first few chapters and then started writing.

This is probably not the best description of a method, but I found the story more interesting narratively and easier to shape into a coherent whole when I could get all those little ideas out and then form them into something, if you see what I mean. Also, there were elements I wanted to maintain throughout the story, so this gave me an extra place to stop and write about things in general, as well as events and scenes in particular.

I hope this helps, though I'm not sure I'm being very clear. Maybe it's just not a very clear method, I dunno. Best of luck, though!

[anesthezea.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend reading "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. My own copy is looking very worn and is almost 95% yellow highlighter now. I've had it since I was 15.

[rhi]

Quick Plot has been useful to me, in a 'type a quick summary of a scene,' 'shuffle as needed,' 'oh, I need to remember X in scene y' type of way. Hope it helps?

[mayoihumbert.livejournal.com]

Excellent post! Even if res doesn't find it relevant to her--since no one settles on exactly the same writing method--I wanted to let you know that it'll help me out, organization being my biggest problem.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, thanks! I did go on a bit, didn't I, but I'm still a little cagey about the whole process thing, so I didn't even notice. I'm glad it was helpful for you. I get the impression that I'm reinventing the wheel here, but I guess that's what you have to do in these sorts of things. At least reinvent it for yourself, if you know what I mean.

Good luck with your writing!

[palebluebell.livejournal.com]

I was checking your lj for story updates and noticed this question; hope you don't mind me weighing into the discussion.

"Dare to be a Great Writer" by Leonard Bishop has been helpful to me - Bishop takes a great deal of his advice from his own writing teacher - Doctor Charles Glicksberg. He also seems to imply that in this class he took, some of his fellow students were Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac among others.

What I liked about this book, was that the advice was coming from someone who hadn't the benefit of higher education - who'd barely scraped through high school, but who, once he'd been armed with the right tools, managed to become a writer despite the drawbacks. Even though our circumstances are wildly divergent in most ways, in this sense at least, I still felt an affinity for the man.

I think it's important to take this sort of advice from as many sources as possible, because what works for one mightn't work for another.

I'm off to follow all the links that this question brought up - so thank you for the asking of it.

[zulu]

Donald Mass's "Writing The Breakout Novel".

[celli]

A friend gave me a book called "Goal, Motivation, and Conflict." I have it right here, actually, since...um...I haven't had a chance to read it in the *cough*twoyears*cough* since she gave it to me. (I was in college! or something!) Anyway, she swears by it as a plotting technique.

Lawrence Block also wrote a book on writing a novel, called I think "Writing the Novel." I found it interesting if not essential.

this might be of use

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Resonant,

Sorry to have been out of touch--will be brief here as am slacking at work.
This is the blog for a writer of SF short stories whose first novel is coming out from Tor in November. He talks a bit about his process. Hope it is of help and that all is going well.

http://countingheads.blogspot.com/

All the best,

Skinner Box

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Funny -- while I was writing this post, I was also googling, and I happened upon the Snowflake Method first thing. It sounds perfectly suited to a linear brain like mine, and I'm already working on it.

But, yeah, not so much wanting to read his books.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

That's very useful! I'm using it in combination with the Snowflake Method, (http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/the_snowflake.html) and so far my brain seems to be able to contain it all.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I read Making Light regularly, but it hadn't occurred to me to look to her for writing info. Thanks!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Added it to my list. Thanks!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea. I think my problem is very much like yours, just coming up with an appropriate level of structure -- not so much that you lose interest in the story before you've even written it, but not so little that you keep having to go back and fix enormous problems over and over. (I probably write three different novels to get Transfigurations. I never want to go through that again.)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Added it to my list! Thanks.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I'll look into that! Thanks.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Added it to my list -- thanks!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

And another one for the list. Thanks!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I read something called "Goal, Motivation and Conflict," but now I can't remember who the author was or whether it was helpful or not. (Now there's the response you want when someone reads your book.)

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's isn't a presumed conclusion in there that doesn't quite fit. I say this because I have really obsessively plotted out my current story to a degree I have never done in my life, but I find that I'm still engaged and still employing a sort of discovery method as I'm writing, because I didn't exactly plot down to an exact scene by scene. I plotted down to "these are the things that should happen in this chapter" sort of level, and even some specific bits I wanted, but not enough to totally dictate what was going to happen. So I'm still engaged in the writing, and working stuff out and making it up as I go along, but in a much more finite way. I also feared losing interest once it was sort of all but written, but I'm not sure that's entirely possible, really. Maybe it is, if you micomanage it, but I think there's an inbetween in there that's easier to hit than you might imagine.

That's my experience thus far, anyway. But I'm only on chapter 4, so what do I know.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Thanks! -- and, hey, you'll probably never see this, but if you do -- I've lost your e-mail address. And did you see that I wrote you a Turnbull snippet? (http://trickster.org/res/mortification.html)

Correction.

[zulu]

Spelled it wrong, sorry, it's Donald Maass.

[rhi]

Most welcome. I hope one or more of the suggestions helps!