First off, if you look below you'll see I added "Cat's Eye and Agate" to my submitted list. In other news, I've started to listen to the audiobook of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell again. It's one of my top five favorite books, and this time of year, when summer is fading to autumn, has always struck me as the perfect weather for it.
So Wednesday I start the new novel, but there's a lot of work to be done before that starts. Today I did some brainstorming on scenes and plots. Usually I'm much more regimented in the way I prepare my outlines, but I'm trying something different here. I've been trying to develop intact scenes first without regard to plot.
What I mean by that is this: if I'm inspired by a location, an event, a meeting, or whatever, I write that down as a scene. I don't worry about where it's going to go or what it's going to accomplish, although usually the setting or characters restrict its placement in the story to some extent. Then I see what patterns start to emerge and draw the plot from that.
As the title of this post indicates, I'm not going to go into detail on that today. I've given you the scenario already of the novel, a bit about the culture and magic system and motivations of the main character, but that's not the same as a scene-by-scene breakdown or revelation of the plot. Oh, I'm going to post a lot of that stuff tomorrow and Tuesday, but for anyone who wants to be surprised as the story unfolds, you can safely read this post and anything from October 1st onward, and nothing else.
Anyway, back to what I was saying. I think the scenes that I'm coming up with will be vivid and interesting scenes in isolation, and the "finished" novel may have them in a different order than the order I write them in. As I get a better idea of all the plots and subplots of the novel, I may go back and add extra information or characterization to set up and pay off various threads. But all that will be done within the context of scenes that are a priori vivid and interesting.
This process has also helped me to develop characters I might not otherwise have thought of, characters who I believe will play a large part in the finished story. I've also come to better understand the motivation of several characters that I had not fully grasped before.
I can't promise anyone reading this that the rough draft of this story, as I write it, will make complete sense. It's almost inevitable that as I write, I will decide that certain things need to be set up earlier in the narrative, or be changed entirely.
When this happens, I will do one of two things. If I need to write a new scene entirely, I will write it and indicate where in the story it should go, so if you feel like it, you can go back and put it into the context of the whole story. If it's an alteration, I will indicate the section I'm talking about, and tell you in italics what the revised version will have, then continue on with the story as if I had already made that change.
Please keep in mind that I'll be making this up as I go along. Yes, I have a plan, and I have an ending I want to get to, so don't think I'm leading you on a wild goose chase. All the same, there may be lots of digressions that wouldn't appear in a polished novel. Either way, I hope you enjoy the ride.
Publication Status:
- Submitted: 6
- Accepted: 1
- Rejected: 2
- Pending: 3
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