Colours!
So I made a plot diagram today. It was quite fun. I like making colourful things. It's easier than actually writing things! I think it came out okay. The sub-plots seem kind of balance and four is probably quite enough for now.
The Step Outline
Disclaimer: Okay this may read like stupidly obvious advice. A step outline may just seem like any other set of notes. For me I think it's more a case of my writing mentality adjusting.
I feel compelled to talk a little more about the step outline. We were introduced to them as a stage in the screenwriting process. I'm finding I use them increasingly often in any and all my writings. Even before I begin I have ideas for the story I want to tell. These ideas are more often than not scattered throughout the whole and there are gaping chasms that need filling before any of it will hold together. The step outline allows me to get around that. It gives me permission to write less. By this I mean I can summarise rather than get lost in prose. I can sketch out the entire piece before getting bogged down in the details.
This is a bit of a departure for me. In the past I'd been taught to free write and been a great advocate of free writing in general. There's still something attractive about plowing into a story and letting it unfold itself. But here's the thing: There's always something nagging away when I free write. I feel like I'm on the crest of a wave of words and any minute it's going to break and I'll be left unable to continue. It's because I don't know what's going to happen next. At all. A step outline lets me avoid that. I can still free write a scene and if it's strong enough it may alter the outline but I know how things are supposed to fit together. And that helps.
So yeah. Obvious advice. But useful... for me anyway.
Script Choices
So I'm working on my script. I dunno... It seems a little generic. I play a quick game of spot the cliché and pick up on a few. The next question I ask myself is "are these really clichés or just things common to the environment my script is set in?". The question after that was "does it matter?". I then decided this entire line of questioning (myself) didn't really matter anyway.
So this is what I've got...
- An angry character who is dissatisfied with their job because they don't see the point.
- A shy character who is the target of unwanted romantic advances from their manager.
- A creepy manager disliked by the first two.
- Colleagues who don't want to help either of the first two.
I need to decide what gender each of these characters is going to be. Should I go with the obvious (man, woman, man) clichéd cast? Should I try and reverse the clichés (woman, man, woman)? How would it change if every character was male? What if they were all female? Is it a cliché to have a manager as an antagonist? Would basic plot (#1 and #2 discover weird secret and disrupt the office to escape their jobs) work if the manager is a friend instead of a villain? Is portraying the manager as a monster/villain fair? Is there a way to turn the story around at the end and have the two main characters success be the cause of a catastrophe? Would this remove any redeeming features from the two "good" characters? Would this end up turning the manager into a sort-of anti-hero?
Script Class Ongoing
Last night's script class was probably the most useful so far. We discussed sub-plots and how they are created by through the relationships that characters share. It was very interesting to see how two simple tools can help you to create and manage your sub-plots.
The first was what I call a plot-blob-diagram (I'm sure there's a proper term...). You draw a line representing your rising action and along it you place blobs that represent events and developments in plot. You use a different coloured blob for each of your plots and vary the size of the blobs depending on how much time is spent there. This can be very useful for judging if your sub-plots are underdeveloped or if they're in danger of overwhelming your main story thread. If your rising action is more of a jagged line it can help you judge whether each plot is receiving enough attention at the peaks.
The second was the relationship diagram. By writing the names of the characters in your story and drawing lines between them that represent their relationships, the dynamics between them can become a lot clearer. This visual representation can also enable you to see relationships that you weren't previously aware of and create new plots between those characters. We applied the relationship diagram to two people's stories and I think the ideas it generated were extremely useful (and they weren't even my stories!).
We also went through our stories and talked about/brainstormed ways in which they could be improved. I found this extremely useful and have a lot more material to work with now. I really enjoy workshopping!
Planning & Plotting
So I'm wondering about long term plotting and the best way to approach it.
Should you write your detailed character bios one by one and then piece them together?
Should you list the events you want to occur on chronological fashion and then just let your characters react?
How then will you decide what information to reveal when? How will you know what your characters know?
Should you build your character network and then expand your plot from there?
Should you write a list of events you want to happen in your story and then tie them together?
Ugh... Guess I'll have to try them one by one.
Google returns these...
http://www.janetteowens.com/delores%20thornton_march%20issue%202004.htm
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=932
https://www.cs.tcd.ie/~byrnes8/Trinity/Vision_Project/PG3.html
...as well as a few PDFs. Tomorrow's reading I guess.
Subscribe
Tweets
- Actually it was toad in the hole...
- Italian yorkshire pudding cooked in our wok! Fusion food! (http://yfrog.com/6ehvej)
- RT @FakeAPStylebook: Only use "mummy" in place of "mommy" if your subject is genuinely a brainless pyramid-dweller or British as hell.
Music
Photos
Bluster
Categories
- General (134)
- Media (2)
- Reading (5)
- Technology (3)
- Writing (7)
Archive
- August 2010 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- June 2010 (1)
- May 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (2)
- March 2010 (2)
- January 2010 (2)
- December 2009 (1)
- November 2009 (2)
- October 2009 (3)
- September 2009 (8)
- July 2009 (2)
- June 2009 (1)
- May 2009 (5)
- October 2008 (2)
- September 2008 (2)
- August 2008 (2)
- June 2008 (4)
- May 2008 (6)
- April 2008 (4)
- March 2008 (12)
- February 2008 (12)
- January 2008 (16)
- December 2007 (16)
- November 2007 (17)
- October 2007 (42)
- September 2007 (36)
- August 2007 (21)
Update!
It's been nearly two months since I last updated. The lack of classes over the summer combined with a general winding down has resulted in less writing and more reading and even more thinking about writing. In short I've been relaxing and making notes. I keep promising that I'm going to write more and be more disciplined but it's just words... I mean it's empty promises to myself. The mood to write comes and goes. I've have been writing, but I'd be lieing if I said I was writing every day.
So... Current Projects... I've got two large projects in mind at the moment. I've found that a lot of the short pieces and exerts that appeared in my writing practice lately can be slotted into one of the two worlds. What they're lacking at the moment are overall plots but ideas continue to emerge and they're taking me in some interesting directions. I don't want to talk too much about them yet as they're likely to change as they mature but I'm finding that one of the most interesting things is trying to work out how the world in which I set one story can evolve from England as it stands now. I've been talking to knowledgable friends and I'm hoping to have a recent history timeline done by the end of this weekend.
It's only two months till I'm due to start classes again and I'm damned well going to have something significant written by then!