Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Prepping for the Big Leagues


I'm doing a marathon day of planning/plotting on my Nano book.

I have GMC by Debra Dixon. Always good to start with the basics.

I'm also racing through the info from an excellent online KOD course, Where's the Conflict? by CJ Carmichael.

Then it's on to Story Magic, by Robin Perrine and Laura Baker. Another KOD course I took years ago and still go back to every time I start a new book. Love it.

This is the fun part and I have to prevent myself from spending way too much time on preplotting. The book rarely goes in the direction I plan. After the first three chapters the characters have a mind of their own and take over. So Nano will prevent me from obsessing too much about plot.

The tough stuff for me is the actual writing. I know what I'm trying to achieve in my head but getting that vision down on paper is painstaking.

I also have to buy a ladder today, which needs to be transported home by hanging out the trunk of my car. They don't fold over nice and compactly - or if they do they cost 3x as much. And I'll be obsessively checking the shipping info from Dell to see where my computer is.

2 comments:

Kelly Boyce said...

I love the pre-plotting stage. And I hadn't planned on doing much for the NaNo book, but it just sort of took on a life of its own. Now whether or not it'll end up looking like that when I'm done, who knows? Much like the plot, the story itself could also take on a life of its own once I start writing it.

Anonymous said...

I have my basic plot figured out but other than that, I'm going in cold. I figure by Week Two I'll be banging my head against my desk, trying to figure out what to write!

Don't fall off that ladder!(one of my characters just did so I've been writing the hospital scene the past few days! :-))