Preparation for writing

I have a hardbound composition book, the kind that has the top half of the page blank, and the bottom half lined. This goes with me almost everywhere. I also have a tiny notebook in my purse for ideas in the line at the grocery store. The compo book has sketches of lunar mining equipment, lists of people I don't like who are going to be enemies or killed off, notes from when I googled how carbide lamps work, notes on silicon carbide too, there is going to be a lot of carbide in my book, from what I can tell. This morning I was looking up titanium pliers on google, there are far, far more kinds of titanium pliers than I would have expected. So those notes go in. A sketch of the layout of an Amtrak train, and of the connector area between the cars, which I am really going to use for an airlock. A magic marker sketch of the space station in low earth orbit. A detail sketch of a hand and some notes on knit glove design, particularly the shape of the seed stitch patterns on the finger joints. Notes on the compression of surgical stockings vs space suits. A sketch of an ice mine on the moon. Then I wasted a couple hours yesterday and again today coming up with a sketch of the main character, who hasn't got a name yet and is called MC, or C for short. But I think I will just play some more with the Avatar Maker, it's quicker than what I was doing.

Since I'm planning to continue what I started in the April Nano, most of my preparations were already done. But I did spend a lot of time researching the ins-and-outs of a new location since the first part ended with a big move.

Mllersil, me too!  I am amazed by the inventiveness of fantasy writers..... what I am writing is technically fantasy as it's in an imaginary world - but it's a distinctly earthlike world!

I have a rough outline for my novel but could always do with another plot twist or two... and I'm pretty hazy on the geography and religions of my world in particular!  And some of the Whys..... why does an intelligent woman in her late 20s return with her young sister to a country that's about to go up in flames?  As relatives of the royal family they'll be right there in the spotlight too!  Does she return because of encroaching religious fundamentalism in her country of exile......  Maybe for good reasons (like what?) she's not particularly well informed about the situation at home.  Maybe no-one is; perhaps it's that unstable a situation that it takes huge numbers of people by surprise?  So much to work out.  I decided to attempt Nanowrimo Camp at a pretty late stage so I guess I'm a Pantser

I may take your advice BoomBoom and draw a map.  Actually I used to do that when I was little, draw maps of imaginary worlds.....

I apparently start building worlds, outlines, thought maps and blood pressure ;-)

I tried pantsing, but I failed. Since I didnt have the destination picked out, my characters wandered pointlessly. And since I didnt have a goal or antagonist or conflict for my protaganist, she just sat around chatting with some stranger she met on the street

So, I started over. Now, I'm sure, I'm over planning. Sooner or later, I'll get the mix right.

Well, in this case, I had a raw setting in mind; worked on that until I ran out of ideas. (I use a really cooperative mindmapping software on my ipad that lets me be pretty flexible, a lot like little index cards with connections to other cards – easily made, edited, moved, shifted, colored, hidden, displayed, and associated.) Then, I do a couple characters, not too deep yet, then back to flesh out the world building a bit. Maybe a few plot points I dont want to miss, then over again to characters to make more folks and give them bios. etc.

So, no real system, just a Lego at a time like a kid building a castle or a spaceship. You have a basic idea to start, but you just start by picking a base, building part of a wall, spotting a long piece in the pile, saying "that would make a good piece over the door", realizing that makes the door double-wide, looking for two doors, throwing that piece out cause you aint got two doors so maybe a drawbridge, realizing you still only have part of a wall so doors and bridges should wait maybe, making a corner, etc etc etc.

I tried snowflaking before. For me, it generated a pretty flat story, and focused on my weakest points. By that I mean I had to know the whole story, at least at a high level, before I could go on.

I also spend significant time clicking Wikipedia's Random Article link, or surfing links from article to article. I actually was inspired toward several things destined for the book: various plants, the concept of serotiny, various weapons, the EATR program from DARPA (renamed in the book, of course), character names, diseases, places, etc.

Boy, this is a real “etc” day for me.

Hmm. Maybe I should give up writing and just do research ;-)

Anyway, I'm procrastinating on the final step before writing: deciding on my opening scene :-) I finally realized that having my protagonist behind a bush peering out at the abandoned city from the top of a faraway hill was just me avoiding starting the book. I may just have to start with some sort of fight inside the city ;-)

Take a look at Scapple at Literature and Latte, the makers of Scrivener. It is a light weight mind mapping program. At $14.99, it is also light weight on the purse. The Windows one is still in beta, but is seems to work pretty well. The Mac version has been out since January. mllersil posted the link under Writing Software. The beta is free, of course, and there is a Free Trial for the Mac version.

Scapple for Mac

Beta Scapple for Windows

Here is a link to a brief video demo of it: Video of Scapple

After trying Scapple for a few days I'm back to pen and paper.    Don't get me wrong, the program is really good, if not the best for mind-mapping and clustering on your pc. I just found out that I apparently only get significant ideas working with my hands. As in writing, drawing or folding on and with real paper, not mouse-clicking on a screen. Funny, eh? Must be another one of those haptic things ... .

During the last twenty years I kind of refined my 'planned pantsing' technique over and over again. It still needs work, I think, but I'm comfortable enough with it right now. My plot ideas work kind of similar to a landslide: There was this moment I started writing somewhen in prehistoric times or such. My first idea ever - a husband who murdered his wife and got psychotic over it, fearing her ghost coming back to haunt him. Not very original, not very good, but it was a start. And then I thought I should write the same thing from the wife's perspective. So I got a second story, even longer than the first. And then I thought, what if someone noticed the murder? Third story. And then the murderer's best friend came over, noticed something wrong about him and reminisced about their childhood. Fourth. And somewhere in that childhood they briefly met another boy whose hobby was to collect old bins. Well, he got a story of his own as he found that magic old can with a djinn trapped in it. And so on. Every story I get somehow has roots to another one. And after twenty years there are still new stories to discover out there, which always amazes me to no end. (My current July project is set in a forest, so I now have a whole bunch of accompanying stories taking place at exactly the same place, ranging from a lonely Roman soldier who got lost in the Germanic woods to a thief from the Middle Ages hiding there to my current story to a fire obliterating said forest in the future, maybe fueled by a war with an alien race or a horrible method of land reclamation or something. Ah, the details ...)

After the first idea has settled somewhat I'm doing a rough outline. Then I start pantsing around inside the outline. It's mostly only then I get a good lead on how the story really goes and have to modify my outline respectively, make it more detailed in the process. Sadly, this cycle repeats another two times or so before I finally have something worth finishing. And even then there might be surprises or A-ha! moments to send off the story to a whole new direction. And don't get me started on editing ...

I don't know how those people not writing can survive.

lovely, mllersil.

My plans took a huge leap forward yesterday when I accidentally found a picture of my main character on the Internet.  Actually, it's someone who looks an awful lot like how I imagine my main character to look. I seem to write better if I have a picture to inspire me - a person, a landscape, something from the story - and so far I didn't have that. Now I do. I still wish I could draw well enough to sketch some portraits, but this will do fine.