#am outlining

[k--havok]

thinking thinking thinking about WID and the story a lot again. Still think I may wanna write Book II first as thats where most my excitement and the action is but like. Ugh. Having to set up everything in book I is just ugh.

I am not the best at writing character-driven stories clearly as I always worry that people will find it boring or not like my MC and stuff. I also struggle with Putting The Guy Into Situations tbh bc lets be honest most real life is quite boring.

Why do I have so many ideas that work in contemporary settings when I. Struggle with writing contemporary settings so much?

And I have played around with making the story more fantastical in some ways. I've thought about making the demons and humans live on the same world. I've thought of the ye-old iseki'd trope. Or the kidnapping trope. But neither of those are all that interesting to me as it has become a bit of a cliche (even if it does work) and I just don't think it would be in-character for Casrath either. So bleh.

I do still wanna at the very least outline the main story beats of Book I before diving into Book II so I have a rough idea what happens, but at the same time, I'm struggling with developing the outline still. So I just kinda wanna scream I guess.

[ineffably-good]

Writer types - anyone a scrivener user?

Spent nearly all day playing with Scrivener (with some help from a writer buddy who uses it a lot), because I’ve decided to use it for my next project —and I was dubious for about an hour, but now I 🧡AM 🧡IN 🧡 LOVE🧡. So cool. Also I have a rough beginning, middle, and end of my next story. Yay!

Getting ready for nanowrimo - National novel writing month, starting November 1st. Gonna take a break from fantasy romance and write an ace, F/F, story that involves an ineffable bureaucracy that assigns the recently dead to their perfect human partner for rehabilitation, a fake psychic who becomes a real psychic, a hard nosed ghost paired with a hippie crystal human chick she can’t initially stand, a murder, and ends in a lovely ace platonic life partnership between a human and a ghost.

Sound interesting?

Here’s a link to scrivener for you fellow writers:

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview?gclid=Cj0KCQjw-4SLBhCVARIsACrhWLVeXEUIZ5pAIdJWcesQ28FjmV_6Cen1fuW24fw0hOyDOBWVdT5hDasaAjawEALw_wcB

Scrivener | Literature & Latte

[aritany]

aint that the way

[infinitelyblankpage]

I caved ... I have to outline if I want to finish these stories

[bymeganwithmeraki]

How I’m Now Plotting EARHART & NOONAN’S LAST GRAND ADVENTURE

Because maybe talking about it will make it easier for me to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

Index cards, people! I got the idea from the two index cards I made to remind me what the hell I’ve done to my table of contents.

(I used this plot structure if you were curious. I love this blogger, and you should check out everything she does.)

A problem I consistently run/ran into was pacing, so now I’ve got some dates I know will be in this book written on index cards, beginning with July 1, 1937, the day before Amelia and Fred take off from New Guinea. On the back of these Date Cards™, I’ve written any non-negotiable holidays and events (birthdays, when Amelia and Fred went MIA, etc.).

I’m about to start making the Scene Cards™, which will consist of—you guessed it—scenes from the story. I’ll divide those scenes into the days they take place, with the final day, of course, being THE END. I predict it’s going to take quite a bit of reshuffling. It’s hard to tell without the second page of the Table of Contents shown, but I’ve already torn apart the structure.

Then I’ll start labelling for structure (probably just colored dots in the corner) once I have the events set.

Does anyone who’s used index cards for plotting have any tips for me? I’d greatly appreciate it if you reblogged or dropped me an ask or a message. TIA!

[lorawinters]

Of all the stickynotes I've used while outlining my novel, this is my personal favorite...

[em-dashes]

EMILY’S NON-NANO UPDATE - #2

the thing i was kinda struggling with is that while SUDDENCE does feature superpowers, it’s at its core Not an action story. it’s a story about grief and guilt and pain and i didn’t want the ending to be a big flashy action showpiece because that would disrupt the more introspective, mellow vibe i’m going for.

but any non-action climax ideas i had were just so. anticlimactic. how do i write a climax that doesn’t feature action? all my stories thus far have been hard sci-fi that is more action-focused. i didn’t know how to resolve a story any other way. the original ending i had in mind, dany faces down a huge team of gun-toting cops and wreaks destruction. i hated it, but it was all i could think of.

when i think of the movie that most inspired SUDDENCE, Midnight Special, i always think of how disappointed i was with the ending. it felt like it became too big for what the story was building up. we have deep, sombre, grounded, immaculate mysterious vibes for most of the movie, focusing on very human characters and emotions despite the superpowered kid, and it ends with the idea that...there is an alternate dimension...that the kid has to go to......:squint:

in no way am i going to act like i could have “fixed” the movie. i don’t even know if other people disliked the ending too. but anyway, that wasn’t my story to tell. i just know i didn’t want my story to feel like that. like the ending was too different from what the preceding story was setting up.

so i needed to keep the climax small. but it needed to Be a climax nonetheless.

there are plenty of stories (action of otherwise) that involve emotion-based climaxes. but i wasn’t actively thinking of any when an idea struck me out of nowhere, and it...somehow...worked? it wouldn’t change too much about what i outlined, and it matches the themes and dany’s internal struggle wayyyy better than mowing down rows of cops with explosions. of course, still some thinking to do in terms of specifics, but i think it’ll work :^D

btw there’s no taglist for SUDDENCE! but feel free to creep through my #suddence tag once in a while to see how the story is progressing :>

[wolfpants]

I hate Snape and I'll never write about him again unless you know we're talking in deceased terms