random writerly thoughts
Dec. 12th, 2006 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lagilmanI have had a toasted corn muffin and an earl grey, very hot, from Lulu's. There is happiness no act of man or god can take away.
Some thoughts occured to me this morning, as I was forcing myself through the get-up-and-go routine.
1. I write all of my novels from detailed chapter-by-chapter outline
2. I am an organic, go-with-the-flow writer who lets the plots mutate as they will.
These two things should be contradictory. But they're not. Exactly.
Whenever I write a detailed outline, I warn my editor: "now, this is gonna change..." Usually, after a few books, they laugh. Usually.
Y'see, I start in the same place as the outline. I end up in the same place. The routes from A to Z just aren't exactly as listed on the itinerary. It's the mapquest school of plotting, if you will. "Hrm, that alleged street looks like a staircase. I think I'll go another way."
In the current project, which I have taken to calling The Night Serpent, or TNS for shorthand, there are things which have to happen. I thought they happened A B C D E. Turns out it's more like A B D F C E. And Z keeps trying to jump its place in line.
It's not that I haven't thought the plot out carefully beforehand, with marks for pacing and logic and building internal consistency. Rather, I've discovered that once I get to know the characters, and am walking through their day with them, I see more than I could peering at them from the narrow distance of the outline. And the things we see then, well, they tip the world in strange and interesting ways.
Is cool, though. No stress. I know where we're going, and if the map fails, we'll just hang our head out the window and yell for directions from the guy walking his dog.
Meanwhile, I am doing battle with a balky fax machine. It knows we plan to replace it in the New Year...
Some thoughts occured to me this morning, as I was forcing myself through the get-up-and-go routine.
1. I write all of my novels from detailed chapter-by-chapter outline
2. I am an organic, go-with-the-flow writer who lets the plots mutate as they will.
These two things should be contradictory. But they're not. Exactly.
Whenever I write a detailed outline, I warn my editor: "now, this is gonna change..." Usually, after a few books, they laugh. Usually.
Y'see, I start in the same place as the outline. I end up in the same place. The routes from A to Z just aren't exactly as listed on the itinerary. It's the mapquest school of plotting, if you will. "Hrm, that alleged street looks like a staircase. I think I'll go another way."
In the current project, which I have taken to calling The Night Serpent, or TNS for shorthand, there are things which have to happen. I thought they happened A B C D E. Turns out it's more like A B D F C E. And Z keeps trying to jump its place in line.
It's not that I haven't thought the plot out carefully beforehand, with marks for pacing and logic and building internal consistency. Rather, I've discovered that once I get to know the characters, and am walking through their day with them, I see more than I could peering at them from the narrow distance of the outline. And the things we see then, well, they tip the world in strange and interesting ways.
Is cool, though. No stress. I know where we're going, and if the map fails, we'll just hang our head out the window and yell for directions from the guy walking his dog.
Meanwhile, I am doing battle with a balky fax machine. It knows we plan to replace it in the New Year...
