After I was done at the salon, I went next door to the cafe for a coffee and sat down outside with my handy-dandy story notebook and did some more brainstorming on my hero, Henri. I'm working out the finer details of the plot, things I really HAVE to know before I start writing and may write myself into a bad corner, forcing me to fix it later.
The other day I talked about my timeline for Henri and mused about how effective it was to spend a lot of time filling it in. Nienke said the following:
I vote for doing the work in advance and then changing it as needed as you go. I really believe the story is going to be more effective if you really know your characters and have an idea of what happens/ed when. It's also a good way to make sure you put foreshadows and lead-ups in the right places. And, it will really help develop goals and motivations.
And I really tend to agree with her :-) I guess part of me feels that doing all this is more like procrastination, especially as I have so much fun doing it. But I know in the past I've had to go back while editing and work all this stuff out then fill it in in the ms, so maybe I AM just saving myself time later. And not just playing around.
This afternoon I'm going to continue with my work and try again to make Dragon NaturallySpeaking behave. To save my wrists, I'm trying to remember to dictate as much as I can, but a lot of the time the accuracy of the software leaves much to be desired. And I'm a perfectionist. Maybe I should work on that.
Teresa (who really wishes she were in Atlanta at National right now)
Currently Reading: Books for research/review
Links of the Day: Michelle Willingham's Character Alphabet Chart and Master Plotting Chart
No comments:
Post a Comment