Nightmares!

In a previous post I spoke about different kinds of sources where writers might draw inspiration from for novels. And by far my favourite source (as might have been evident) are dreams. I hope you bear with me on writing about this yet again, but I wanted to explore a different take on this inspiration source: nightmares!

As I said, dreams are my favourite inspiration source. The best ones have you moving about a world which makes sense (often in a very illogical manner) and has it's own rules and barriers. And best of all, you believe it totally. I don't know if I'm alone on this, but I've had dreams before where some idea which would sound wacky to anyone in broad daylight is the foundation of the whole world I'm seeing at night.

Flying monkeys in the sky? Why of course. Anyone would be a fool to doubt that monkeys could fly. Just like anyone would be a fool to wonder why these dimensional vortexes keep opening and closing sporadically around us for no apparent reasons.

But dreams aren't a "one size fits all". Okay, you might see a good dream which is a great idea for a book plot. However, what kind of book would it be good for?

Picture courtesy of Chance Agrella
freerangestock.com

There a different kinds of dreams, and not all of them will fit into every genre. The kind which I described above might be good for a Sci-Fi or "Alice in Wonderland"-ish novel, but I don't think it would do much for a romance or western. You see? What scene you see often also sets your genre. And honestly, some of my most favourites are nightmares.

"Why," I hear you say, "would anyone be mad enough to like nightmares?" Excellent question. To be honest, it's purely for the plot value. I like horror movies and stories myself. No, not the kinds with blood and guts thrown all over the place and no plot. The kinds where you have that unknown, creeping horror happening! Think of The Ring and Blairwitch Project. The stuff that doesn't have you cringing from the fake blood but rather adrenaline-shot from wondering "where is the monster?" type thing.

But alas, I find horror is becoming harder and harder to write and direct. Too many are falling for the "go with the obvious" approach. Result? You're sitting there bored or, even worse, laughing and wondering why you squandered a good tenner on the two-bit piece of rubbish in front of you now. Being so hitched onto my Fantasy writing as I am, I have tried and found that writing in other genres has me crippled. It takes more work, but it feels like the harder I try to "make it go right" the more awful the text becomes!

Picture courtesy of Mark Sylvester
freerangestock.com

Nightmares. This is where they truly come in handy. I feel  like nightmares come from the essence of fear itself, from something that actually makes you scared. And that's why they can make for some really interesting horror-story bases.
One of my favourite nightmares was one which involved a creature that looked remarkably like The Groke from Moomins. This thing, although very much a cartoon character, had scared the living daylights out of me as a kid. Especially this scene from the TV series! I mean look at it! This dark, hulking creature, that's supposed to freeze you to death if you touch it, standing motionless in front of you and just staring with eyes as white as floodlights!

Although I'd not watched the Moomin animations for years, one night I had this dream with a creature that morphed between human and Groke form and ate souls. Yes. Freaky. To me at least.
Needless to say that I felt like I'd gone through something of an adrenaline rush when I woke up. But now I had an image in my head that I knew was terrifying. Something different, but something that others too might find scary.

One of the key things about writing is not trying to please others but writing so that you are happy about your story. And I can think of no better gauge of horror-story-goodness than how fast it makes your blood race! And while there may be many people who aren't afraid of the Groke, there are still plenty of frightening things associated with the dark.

Are you a fan of horror?
What kind of sources do you draw your inspiration from for a good horror story?
Which movies and books do you think have got it right, and which ones failed the mark?

WT: Inspiration

Originally I wasn't planning to do another writing technique post until much later, but browsing the good blogs of fellow writers, I have had a stroke of inspiration. And thus, I wanted to make a post on inspiration as I haven't done one before.

Picture courtesy of Chance Agrella
freerangestock.com

Now you might be thinking "why don't you just call this 'busting writers block' instead?" Well, this is because working at busting writers block and inspiration are actually a bit different. Not having ideas about what to write next is just one kind of writers block, there are lots more ways to get it. I'll tackle writer's block either as a single other post, or as  a collection of linked posts. But for now, let's get inspirational!

Ideas From The Environment
Have you ever written a novel, story, poem or just a scribble that someone read and liked, then said, "where ever did you get your idea from?"
I've had that experience, and the weird part is that I don't always have a good answer. "I just thought of it." I don't really register my sources of inspiration like that.

Picture courtesy of Chance Agrella

But often, some of the best ideas come from just looking around at the stuff around you. I reckon there's a whole art to just looking at the world around from a different angle than before.

My favourite way of getting inspiration from the environment is to take a walk. That's just it: take a walk. And look! Especially into places you've not been before or don't know well. My favourite places to walk are definitely forests and anywhere near water. I don't know why but it feels so mysterious somehow. My favourite (and definitely most inspirational) time to walk about and look at things has to be nighttime.

Night is really mysterious in my opinion. Again, I have no idea why, but when I'm surrounded by darkness it's somehow incredibly easy for me to think up endless amounts of ideas. Sunset and dusk are not far off from this benchmark either.

And high-up places, from where the view stretches out as far as the eye can see! Or suburbs on snowy nights with all the lights from apartment windows peeking through the falling haze. Or the quiet shades below silver birches beside a lake on a hot summer day.
Heh, I guess my Scandic background kind of influences this.

But basically, even in cities, there are a lot of different kinds of places to go and be in and look at. There's bound to be some place that you can draw inspiration and ideas from!

Inspiration From Dreams

Picture courtesy of Lokigrl616
freerangestock.com

Perhaps one of the best places to get inspiration is from dreams. But there is a definite downside to this kind of inspiration: it isn't something you can necessarily summon up when you need it on command.

I love getting book ideas from dreams. Sometimes I see really out-of-this-world kinds of dreams that make Alice In Wonderland look ordinary (and I'm not exaggerating when I say that).
In fact, the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2011, titled 'Elda', was conceived in this manner.

I always plot my NaNoWriMo novel in October, ready for writing in November. That year, I was planning to do a story I had been thinking up called (temporarily) Angel City.

Picture courtesy of Ian L
freerangestock.com

But on the night between September 30th and October 1st I had a dream about a girl with magic powers trying to escape from an evil witch and white knight trying to capture said girl. The dream actually ended with the knight, very clearly screaming the name 'Elda' again and again. I woke up to that. And like that, boom!, my novel choice changed and I penned out Elda with little effort that month.

But this doesn't happen every night. More often than not I either don't see much of anything or then don't see anything special that I could write about. That's why, when I do see an interesting dream I jot it down right away.
Thing is, most dreams tend to fade from memory quite quickly. When I write them down, I also remember them better even if I lose the paper (oddly enough).

Even bringing bits and pieces from different dreams together is an idea. Keeping a notepad on your bedside table is advised.

Inspiration From Other Art

Picture courtesy of Jan Stýblo
freerangestock.com

Let's face it, art is everywhere. Music you listen to, designs you see in clothes, novels, illustrations in books, movies. Some movies, music and images aren't really that amazing. Some are enough to leave you speechless or send you over the moon.

Sometimes when you read a book or listen to some music, you get an idea from that. Something in that piece inspires you, gives you a thought that then you can expand into something completely original.

Don't get me wrong, just copying what you see off another person's page falls on the side of plagiarism rather than inspiration. But say you read a book about a good romance, but you think it could have been a bit better another way. You can write your own, unique romance in the way you'd like one to be with your own characters.

Or you listen to a good jazz song and it makes you think of a 19th Century club in which your hero would begin his pained journey.
Or you see a movie and think that the way the main character's hair was animated would be perfect with another character of yours. Along these lines.

I myself draw a lot of inspiration from all three of these sources. For one thing, I like to have a playlist for each of my novels. Arkanos is definitely Nina Simone dominated, while Electrostatic Fantasy was laced with Tryad and This Is My Normal State.

I think inspiration is a unique thing and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. Someone might find inspiration in looking at cars, while for me cars are a rather dull subject. It's always a good idea to try something new.
You never know what you might find.

WT: Editing

First of all a Happy New Year to everyone! It feels really weird now that another year is finished if you ask me. I mean it felt like 2011 became 2012 just a few months ago. It just goes by so quickly.

Well, as promised, today's post will be another one on writing techniques. Although I am cheating a little. Originally I meant for the topic to be on writing (as writing naturally tends to come after plotting after all). But as I have been working so studiously on it, I decided to dedicate today's post to editing instead. Here are some of the tips I would recommend to others with regard to getting through the editing process.

One Step At A Time
I'd say this applies mostly to longer stories. My novel is about 60,000-70,000 words long (don't know exactly since the last time I checked was a really long time ago), and so it's quite a piece of work to try and handle at the same time.
Remember, it's not supposed to be perfect the first time through. Or maybe even the second. I think I've gone through each of my chapters about 8-10 times now, and now I'm starting to feel happy with it.

Step One: Concentrate on Content
Worried about grammar and spelling? Especially if you've just finished NaNoWriMo or an equivalent, your spelling may be the pits at that point (I know mine is!). However, even if you have let your inner editor out of its cage, it's not quite time to start worrying about whether the apostrophes are in their right places.
Read over your content, pretend like this is the work of someone else and you've never seen it before. When you see something you'd like to be a bit different, then change it. See something that confuses you? Clarify until you are happy you can understand it. Main thing is to know it might take a few goes through before its good and ready.

Step Two: Break It Up
One of my favourite things to do is to separate the chapters up into separate word files. My reason for that was that the scroll bar became so tiny with it all in one file that I nudge the mouse a millimetre I jump ahead about ten pages. But it also helped me concentrate on the chapters separately. :-)

Step Three: You Are Your Audience
BIGGEST advice I would give on editing is don't try to please "people". I know when I first started writing (not even close to editing) I kept thinking 'What would "everyone" make of this sentence like this?'. Guess how much I wrote of that novel before my first NaNo? 3,000 words. In 3 years. When I first started editing I slipped into the same vein: 'What's "everybody" going to think of this?' Answer is: you don't know. And if one thing is true is that you can't please everybody. If nothing else, there's always going to be that one granny or school-yard bully out there somewhere who will imagine things up to point out of your story because they live off of making others feel miserable. So, the most important critic you have to please is YOU. Do you like the characters? Do you think the plot is good? Do you think this draft is ready for the publisher/agent/your neighbour to see? If the answer is 'yes', well, then that is what is true. :-) It's the best way to move forward.

Step Four: Take A Break
Have you ever heard of the term 'reading things into the text'? If you haven't, then this is when people read text and assume or want something to be written in and this makes them see that which they are expecting mentally rather than what is actually written. After you have stared at the same text for a while, you begin to remember more or less what was written. You start thinking in concepts rather than reading, and you miss things. After a bit of editing (especially if I think I still need to come back to the chapter for a check-up) I take a break (at least a full day) before coming back. Preferably I take a week. This way my mind is fresh to look at my text from a whole new angle. It works miracles! Bananas and Fanta help too!

Step Five: Know Your Place
Even though it might sound impossible, your novel is going to be finished one day. And if you are anything like me, you will still be looking back and thinking 'That comma should have been two words down the sentence!' There is a time and place to put the editing pen down and call it a day. For me, I've decided that when I go over a chapter and I'm doing exactly that—correcting the places of commas—I'll know I've done all I can do and then it will be over to my trusted beta readers for the next phase!

Step Six: Have Fun
A book isn't really much worth writing if you hate every minute of the experience. Best writing happens when you love what you're doing and don't stress about what other people might think. Chris Baty from NaNoWriMo was right in saying that you are the only one who can write your amazing story. And there are people waiting eagerly to read it!

These are my six tips for editing that help get me through. It's the way I've approached my own editing and so far it has been working well.

How do you like to approach editing? What's the biggest tip you would give to someone else who is facing editing a novel or story or piece of writing for the first time?

Until next time! Monkey-out!

Mid-NaNoWriMo 2011 -- ELDA

Okay, so have to get out of the habit of having three month breaks between posts! -_-

Oh well, New Years coming up. Suppose we know one of my resolutions already.

Ok! Sitting here sipping my home-made latte, listening to a Japanese internet radio station and trying to concentrate enough to get something done worth calling 'production.' What else to do but to update my long-forgotten, no scratch that, just partially left unattended, blog.

I'm finally going to post that summary of Elda that I've been promising, and here it is!

"It's been thirty years now. Thirty years since the hundred-year rule of the wicked witch Elda ended. And peace has returned to The Land, her cruelty being all but a lingering memory. Those memories, legends speak of her evil and her power. Yet not a one tell of how it all ended. In all accounts, she simply vanished.
But this cannot be so. For one so horrible and god-like cannot simply disappear.

Ikkoris, a young boy from an IroKai tribe, is obsessed with stories of her. Though his curiosity and mischief are but the pain of the village. Until one day he finds a mysterious young girl in the mists known only as White Wolf. And she seems to know something of Elda.
Along with his new friend, Ikkoris sets off to find the past. But with a strange white knight out to resurrect Elda and these two trouble, and the village people wishing to silence him, a journey of intrigue soon turns into a battle to keep the evil and good at balance in the world around them. And now it is a race against time between truth and lies. They must succeed, or risk plunging the world back under Elda's control."

So there we go! Three agonising weeks but I finally managed to type one out. ^_^ My progress so far is about 28 thousand words, meaning a little above target. I'm quite pleased with the way it's turning out as well. Needs editing for sure, but it's not a bunch of gobbledy-goop.

I haven't had a chance to go back and read over any of it yet. But soon as I do I'll post an excerpt onto the Novel Info page!

How are my fellow NaNoWriMo participants doing?

WT: Troubleshooting Plot Problems

Ok, first just a quick amendment to the last post here. The date on it is incorrect, it's actually posted on the 23rd of April. Now that my pedantic side has been satisfied by correcting that little point, onto the rest of the post!

In the last Writing Technique I covered my plotting method. Now I'm going to highlight some of the ways which I use to troubleshoot a plot which is going nuts.

The first problem I had with being able to fix problems was picking up that there was a problem. Sounds a little confusing I know, but have you ever felt that something's not quite right with your novel but your not sure if it's just you and that other people wouldn't think there's something wrong? This used to be my trouble, wondering if others would judge a flaw more severely. So here's the trick I use to decide where I need to fix something and where it's good as it is:

Do you like it?

You the writer are, after all, the alpha reader; the first person who will ever lay eyes on your work. It's tempting to want to please others with your writing, after all others will be buying your work with the purpose of enjoying it. But "others" aren't here right now, and even if they were it's easy to get discouraged from external feedback, even if it's meant purely constructively. So here's what I do; I change positions from writer to reader and look at the text in front of me as something I've purchased from a bookshop. Then I ask myself "what would I want to tell the writer to change to make it better?" It usually becomes very clear after that.

>This bit is a little boring, I think it would need another character in it.

>This bit is a bit confusing, I think there's too much happening at once.

>This bit is a little vague, I wish the character would explain the thing a bit more.

Using this technique I always remember to add a "why" to my critique. Just saying 'it's boring and it sucks' is not only less than useless, after a while it can make you feel like you're just not good enough and shouldn't bother, which is complete BS. When you find out why you feel it's boring (or whatever applies) then you figure out what you need to fix. This can take a bit of practice, but after a while it gets easier to realise why you're feeling bored rather than just being bored with your writing.

Okay, now we've got a technique for spotting problem areas, let's look at some ways that we can fix those areas.

Problem: "The text is just boring. The main character is going along in his adventure but I'm getting bored with him. But the adventure is a really good one, I know it."

Possible solution: The text may be too 'linear.' By this I mean the story maybe constantly just following the MC around without a change of scene. Subplots can be a great solution to this. Have you tried breaking the focus away from the MC and onto other characters for a scene or two? Have you got other characters moving around your map and doing different things? Remember that while your main character is doing his/her thing, other individuals will be moving and doing their things are the same time. Like your bad-guy will most likely not just be sitting around waiting for your MC to come and defeat him. The longer the novel, the more you'll need supporting cast to keep it interesting. Try experimenting with adding people and viewpoints if you're stuck.

Problem: "The story doesn't feel to be moving. I'm not really sure where the characters should go or what they should do next."

Possible solution: Do you have an antagonist? Do you have an ending to your story? If one or both of these are missing it can make your story 'wander' aimlessly. But even if you have both for sure you can still run into the trouble of not knowing what your characters should do next. Then you just need to decide what the characters would need to do next in order to reach their goal (like beating the bad-guy for example) and what obstacle is in their way (maybe your bad-guy has sent his evil minion to fight them?)

Problem: "My world is very extensive and complicated. I understand everything that's happening right now and I can picture my world, but I'm not sure if my reader can. I'm worried my reader will be confused."

Possible solution: This just comes down to 'how to describe.' A good short description is a couple sentences long and gives four or five senses about the thing you're describing. Also keep in mind that your reader is stepping into your world essentially blindfolded; with no idea what it looks, sounds, feels, tastes or smells like. If your explaining a magic system or something, it's best to give it to the reader as slowly as possible instead of an info bomb.

I'll cover description in more detail (no pun intended) in another post. I also recommend the book The Master Authors' Secret Handbook that can be found on the Inner Circle Writers' Group website for reading up on description!

Okay, last one.

Problem: "There are a million things wrong with this novel, I don't even know where to start! It's just plain awful. I feel exhausted with trying to fix all the problems."

Possible solution: The trouble may not be as bad as it looks. As we say in Finnish "emergency does not look like this" (which means the same thing). I know for myself that I often get so wrapped up with fixing plot difficulties that I sometimes forget that complicated problems can have simple solutions. If you've spent a lot of time (a month or so) actively writing and working with your story, spending a few months apart can do wonders. After I finished NaNoWriMo I thought that the list of problems with Arkanos would be a mile long. Now I look at it again and I'm surprised at how good the text is. A shorter-term solution is to take a walk. Take the day off and do something else, think about something else. Don't really have other hobbies than writing? Go to the library, go explore a part of town you've never been before, go shopping. This'll give your mind a chance to relax and help you think much more clearly when you come back to your novel.

But sometimes it'll be that your novel may need re-writing. Even if you don't plot normally, doing a little bit of light plotting might help to straighten it out. Even if this is the case, some time away from your writing can do wonders.

Okay, that was today's this month's writing technique on troubleshooting. I hope I was able to explain my method on picking up what and where problems are clearly. If anyone has any questions, please feel completely free to comment and I will do my best to ignore them completely answer promptly with my best advice. :)

Like I mentioned above, next time I'll cover the techniques and methods I use in descriptions. I also watched the broadcast from the Simian City News. *Sigh* I leave my cave for a few days and those monkeys set up a news channel?! But yes, I will also be posting another excerpt from my Electrostatic Fantasy soon.

Thanks for reading!!

How To Plot – Monkey Style!

As promised, here is a run-through of my personal method of plotting. And now that I've finally got a day off errm...completed the images for this post, I can get cracking. :D

Plotting a Novel

Dictionary.com defines 'to plot' it as "to devise or construct the storyline of (a play, novel etc.)." It also defines it as "to plan secretly, especially something hostile or evil." Both seem to fit here.

It's a word that's potentially a very scary and/or confusing one. But plotting doesn't have to be a difficult process. It doesn't even have to take long. :)

Let's plot something together. I'm going to use an incomplete story of mine to show examples, "The Chrysanthemum Curtains" or CC for short.

Depending a little on the story, I like to plot at about medium level on the detail scale. But everything always starts off super simple.

And I mean like super-dooper-über simple.

Step One - The Sentence

The first seed of your to-be bestseller: a sentence (two at most) that covers the core of your story. This is what I had for CC:

"A mysterious writer who's never seen lives in a cottage in the woods and ne

ver leaves her house. A young journalist stumbles on the house by accident and begins to learn her story through her writings."

Unless you're starting off from the point that 'I want to write a story, but I haven't any ideas yet," you might have a story idea in your mind already which you'd like to write. In that case, Step One is already done. :)

Step Two - Detail

Okay, so far we've about 25 words or so to work with. We can't write a novel with that yet, so let's add a little detail. Just a few sentences to add a few more specifics to the above.

"The novel is Historical Fiction and set in England in the 1860s. The young male journalist never sees or speaks to the mysterious writer, but each night a light burns in the first floor window (the window with the chrysanthemum curtains). Every so often an A4 envelope with a manuscript inside has been passed underneath the front door. Reading these, the journalist sees her incredible talent and begins to publish them for her under a pen name, learning her personal story through the fantasy she writes."

Okay, that's a bit better. We can now get some kind of quick idea what the story is about all the way through. This outline is about the length of what you'd tell a friend or a relative when asked what you're writing.

Don't worry if you can't figure out your genre or a title for your novel yet. I just happened to have them here already, but often it happens to me that I figure those out about halfway through writing the first draft of the manuscript. If you don't know them, don't worry, just don't get hung up here trying to come up with the perfect name. It's more important that you get your beauty plotted and written. Fear not fellow novelist, the perfect title will come to you sooner or later. ;)

Step Three - Beginning and Ending

For me it's important to know the beginning and ending of a story. Not word for word, but the idea. For CC:

Beginning: "Young journalist living his ordinary life, believing the mundane is all there is and fantasy and magic to be silly and not real."

Ending: "The secretive writer the journalist came to know through the stories she passed under her door vanishes, apparently dying. The journalist ends up having a wider concept of truth and life and opens his mind to new ideas, ultimately becoming a more successful person."

If I don't know the beginning, of course I can't start writing a manuscript. If I don't know the ending, sooner or later my writing will begin to wander aimlessly resulting in 'loose ends' that are both confusing and (potentially) irritating to the reader.

For me, it also makes it harder to write. So I make sure I clearly define where I'm starting and where my characters are heading very early on.

Step Four - Sketching

Time to do a Picasso. Better be good! :)

Nah, just kidding. But we are going to be doing a little drawing here to help with figuring out the rest of the story, and putting the ideas into order.

Draw a single line down a page with two small horizontal lines at the end and the beginning of that line. At the top we're going to write the beginning in two or three words: "MMC* meets novelist" at the top, and "onto a new life" at the bottom. That should do. This is just a list, no need for more detail. You're probably not going to have the page space for it either though. ^_^

Now draw three more small lines somewhere between The Beginning and The End. These can be the three main culmination points of the story. The first point will be where your main characters first encounter some opposition. They've got a plan, or a mission, or they simply want to continue to exist peacefully, and then something (often the thing that will be the main antagonist throughout the story) appears that tries to stop them or make them fail.

For Frodo it was the hooded riders, for the Little Mermaid it was her father forbidding her from being in contact with humans.

For our CC story, it could be the selfish editor-in-chief who despises anything creative and wants to use his naive junior colleague to defame her and get her into legal trouble.

Either way, this is where the main baddie steps, or some barrier appears for the first time and our story really starts.

Next line could mark where the main characters are apparently, or risking, failing in their purpose. Things are looking bad, and like the main character(s) are going to fail or have very few chances left. This bit is often very close to the biggest battle of the story.

The last line should be the 'big fight,' where your main protagonist and antagonist meet. It could be a light sabre fight, it could be a chess match. But regardless it's the big highlight of the story.

Now that we've got a little filling between The Beginning and The End, draw in as many even smaller lines as you want between those we've got. Here we write similar short notes on roughly what we think might happen between each point.

It's also not a big deal right now if we don't get the order of the events right. At the latest things will get sorted in editing. So I just stick what I think sort of feels right where I sort of think it might possibly go...or not. :)

Step Five - Writing it Out

This is what I like to do. I take an A5 notebook of 40 pages long and dedicate that as the plot book of one novel (which is intended to be around 50,000 words or more). Then I take each event and write it out a little more thoroughly.

So instead of it being "big fight" I write "Main character meets antagonist on roof. Emotions flair up, MMC takes revenge. Bad guy falls to his death." Something like this. And in this way I write out, with just a tad more detail, each item that we wrote up in the diagram above.

And that's it. That's my plotting technique. :) Personally I often have a pretty clear idea of the most major events of a story, so I like to Four and Five the other way around (so I write up the scenes and then do a little diagram to clear up what order everything happened in). Since it's my personal of plotting, this method might not fit everyone. But I hope I may have inspired some ideas about how to approach plotting for those who wish to try. :)

Now that we've got a basic view of our story as a whole, we're ready to write the first draft. This draft is not going to be the final version, but just another step of adding on more detail from before. At this point competitions like NaNoWriMo are very helpful if you feel like you need motivation to get the writing done (like I often do ^_^;;). And always remember what awaits you at the other end of the road of writing: a beautiful finished manuscript ready for publishing! :D

Next time I'll be talking about what I do for troubleshooting when I run into difficulties with a story during plotting or writing.

If anyone has any questions about this plotting technique or plotting in general, feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer. :)

Thanks for reading!

(*MMC is short for 'male main character.')

(Frodo and Lord of the Rings is copyrighted to JRR Tolkien and The Little Mermaid to Disney. The original story of The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Andersen.)

WT*: Plotter VS Pantser

Alright. Here, finally, is the post I've been meaning to write for a month. It was inspired by one of Kathrine Roid's posts on the same subject, which for the life of me I cannot find again for some reason. :-P

I don't know if this can exactly be qualified as a "writing technique," but if nothing else I'll be using it as a means to enter into that sphere.

In her post, Kathrine wrote that she identified herself more as a pantser** than a plotter. Funnily enough, I've always identified myself more as a planner, sometimes even 'compulsory planner,' and have only recently dabbled in the scary and forbidden art known as pantsing. No one can tell you which suits your style best except you. Some feel planning and then writing is like writing a novel twice which takes the thrill out of it. Others, like myself, feel they need some kind of map of the world they're adventuring into in order to feel confident they'll make it to the other side. My advice is that it's best to try out both styles and see in practice which one fits you best.

Here are a few pros and cons of planning from my opinion:

PROS

1) You know where you're going. And most of the time that results in not getting lost along the way. Fewer days of "oh good cow, my character needs to get to the other side of that river in the next three days and they're out in the sahara." This can make writing a whole novel much easier and less excruciating. When I wrote Electrostatic Fantasy for the first time, I plotted the scene sequence out for the most part and 50,000 felt easy. There were only a couple points at which I lost momentum. But otherwise it was only down to sitting my butt down and writing, not being put off because I had no ideas. And I also felt that that kept the story interesting for me, another thing which inspired me to write.

2) You can handle the barriers before you get to them. A plot is like a summary of the novel in your head. Thoughts can be such fickle things. Kind of like the surface of a pond, they look so crystal clear when you're gazing at them, but when you try to move them around they flicker and jumble about. And then you're not sure what exactly went where. A plot helps you arrange those ideas a little and helps to spot (and of course handle) the biggest and baddest plot troubles that exist. For example, you know Prince Charming will charge the dragon's keep on the other side of the kingdom at the end, but you'd forgotten that you killed his horse in chapter two. How's he going to get there in less than a month? The more detailed you get, the more you'll pick up finer flaws. But the key is to keep it a 'plot,' so straying on the simple side is best.

3) It can be inspiring. It's like getting a first small glimpse at all the best bits in your novel. Like those commercials of movies that show you clips of the exciting or funny parts, you'll be getting a "sneak" preview of what's to come in your novel. Especially once I'd figured out the ending, I couldn't wait to get cracking and get to the later parts which I really wanted to write.

CONS

a) It doesn't always work. Even if you're a veteran plotter, it doesn't always guarantee a smooth ride. A novel of mine, which is incomplete for now, gave me such plotting troubles that you'll most likely hear me gripe on about it until publishing day and beyond. I re-plotted Arkanos - Memorycatcher at least four times. Yes, four times, nearly from scratch per go. The more you plot the more you learn to pick up what exactly is the trouble with any particular bit. But even so you can (and possibly will) run into stories that have you scratching your head anyway.

b) You can lose sight of it. A plot is supposed to be a short summary, like a rough diagram of your story to give you some direction and foresight. But it's possible to get too into it and lose sight of keeping it simple. I strayed there, and started to feel like it was too much work. Of course it was a lot of work, I was basically writing the story out!

c) You can rely too heavily on it. Getting comfortable with doing plotting because it's your style is fine. But relying too much on your plotting notes can land you in a fix. I was writing a scene once and realised I had to add a new dialogue to it. But I hadn't plotted this. I was frozen for a moment, thinking what I should do and how I would do it. You mustn't forget that you're the writer, the source, the all-powerful god that rules over your domain that is your novel. If it isn't written in the plot, the you need to create it then and there. A manual on how to write your own book doesn't exist anywhere. You bringing it to life is what makes it magic. :)

Overall

I prefer plotting over pantsing myself because it normally helps me write more effectively. I get inspired and motivated and often manage to pick up the worst troubles before NaNoWriMo begins, rather than getting stuck with them in the middle of it. But pantsing (the approach I've taken with the SkAI Butterfly) feels rather therapeutic. It's fun to "just write" instead of figuring it all out before hand. And especially if you're not exactly even sure what the story will be about, just beginning to type can be a form of plotting in itself. You're writing it to figure it out.

Well, those were my thoughts on Plotting VS Pantsing. What do you guys think? What do you reckon are the Pros and Cons of pantsing? Which style suits you best?

Next time (once I get around to it ^_^) I'll be writing about how to plot by outlining my own technique.

Until then ;)

*WT is short for 'writing technique(s)'

**Pantser is a NaNoWriMo term that means that you 'fly by the seat of your pants' when you are writing your novel. You have nothing but the absolute basics planned out for your novel.

This attitude towards writing is often opposed by the 'planner', who knows exactly what is going to happen, when it will happen, and where it will happen. Sourced from urbandictionary.com.

Do It Blindfolded

I just figured out a handy little way to get writing done without Mrs. Inner Editor butting about how every sentence that goes down is somehow incorrect or needs immediate literary surgery.

Do it blindfolded!

Literally, I mean it. Although it only works if you can touch type.

I put bandage over my eyes and turned the radio on (mega distraction, since music with lyrics I can understand throws me off). I wrote more words than I had on the previous days and stopped critiquing every sentence.

A bit out of the norm, but then I'm the self-proclaimed inventor of the odd-yet-practical methods of getting things done in my house ^__^

Well, if it gets words down on the keyboard...

It's Not That Crap After All...

Yes, it's Day 19 JulNoWriMo and I'm behind my word count target —.— I've reached a whopping 29,000 when I should be just shy of 31,000. Yeah, okay, that's not such a great difference, I'm only a day behind. But since my writing pace has been dragging, it feels a whole lot bigger! O.o

Even after tweaking the plots and beginning over, for some reason my belief in my creation was dying again. Thank the monkeys it wasn't boredom this time, because if your bored with your own work, that if anything is a sure sign of literary death right then and there. But now I was thinking "this really sounds awful." Worse, I was thinking, "my previous WriMo turned out much better." I've been constantly comparing what I'm writing to arbitrary concepts of 'my other manuscript' and some undefined, vague 'general concept of literary canon.'

So, fearing I was brewing some horrible slop that is deadly at the mildest whiff, I decided to read a portion of this raw version to my mother. Okay, fair enough, she was half-asleep when I did, and surely mothers will always compliment their children's work no matter its market quality (least my will ^__^). But that wasn't what changed my viewpoint. Reading it out loud, I actually heard myself what potential the text had. I heard that it was just fine, just as good as my previous manuscript. The only point where the text got a little shakier was the point I'd started doubting and second-guessing myself. Otherwise it was perfect text (from a first-draft viewpoint).

Okay, I can't say if writing will be quicker now, since I haven't written anything more yet. But I'm much more sure now that struggling through is definitely worth while. And I'm very sure that the Mrs. Inner Editor is definitely and over-stressed, uptight and critique-ridden fool who needs to be given a permanent vacation. Not even when I'm editing does she me much good. And she's the nastiest, meanest cow I know. And she never pays her rent on time.

And I'm betting a lot of authors out there who feel their writing is bad, are writing far better quality that their Mr. and Mrs. Inner Editors will ever let them know. And I know this because I've read some stuff from my friends, and minus one or two perfectly forgiveable quirks they shone with potential to be best sellers.

Least, it's what I think.