I recently wrote that I've had trouble with my WIP, which finally started to move forward again just this week. I thought today I'd share my view of "---lines," although it's a strictly personal view.

I don't outline. I let the story wander where it will, and then I go back and make sure it arcs and flows and makes sense. I know I would be bored by making a plan and then following it step by step, and besides, I often find that things don't work out the way they should when the actual writing occurs, so the plan would be useless at that point. I do "tell" my story into a tape recorder as it comes to me, so that's sort of an outline, but again, it often doesn't work when it's written and I have to change major elements to suit the characters I've chosen.

I do have a timeline. There are lots of ways authors keep themselves on track time-wise, and I usually combine several. I make a handwritten chart with headings for each character on one axis and times on the other. Then I figure out what A is doing in each segment, then B, C, etc. In a historical piece I start with the real character, like Macbeth, sticking as close to reality as possible. Then I fit the fictional characters into the "real" story.

Some authors label their rough draft chapters with the month, day and even time. This helps them keep in mind the relativity of events. For example, how long before your detectives get back information on the post-mortem exam? It had better not be an hour later. (Of course television uses the informal report, where an experienced, world-weary M.E. says, "Well, I can tell you more after the autopsy, but I'd say your vic died of ..." Very convenient.) Anyway, keeping the timeline in your head or before your eyes means you won't be likely to make mistakes like saying it's Tuesday when you said earlier it was two days after Monday.

Still another method is the note-card technique. It sounds old-fashioned, but for those who need visual or tactile confirmation, it can be very helpful. You put your plot events on cards and lay them out before you. Now you pick them up in order that things have to happen. Leftover cards, things that are expository or supplemental and have no real requirement time-wise, slide in where they best fit, keeping the arc in mind and spreading them out so you don't have a lot of non-time-sensitive stuff in one spot. (This is a good point at which to get rid of some things that don't move the story forward, no matter how interesting they are to you!) When you've finished, you have a stack that should be in writing order.

And deadlines. For me, having a deadline is a good thing, at least after a while. It's nice to wander through the plot and write as I will, but when I set myself a finish date (or someone sets it for me), I tend to get down to the nitty-gritty and write the dumb thing. That's when the earlier work of telling and retelling myself the story and figuring out the timeline become valuable, because I've absorbed a sense of the whole. Then all it takes is that "done by" date to make it all come together, hopefully with a plot that makes perfect (well, almost perfect) sense.

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