Outlining With Note Cards 3 The Plotting Under Pressure Method

OUTLINING WITH NOTE CARDS three: THE “PLOTTING UNDER PRESSURE” METHOD On August 18th I challenged myself to really do a few of the writing workouts I’ve beneficial to others. That led to at least one success and one failure. The last of them we’ll cover this week, as a part of a sequence of posts on utilizing note cards to plot your novel. Here’s the challenge as I laid it out final month: And final however not least: I’m still not done with that whole train of utilizing note playing cards to plot out a novel. I’m using the note cards I made that impressed that first submit to populate an overview and so they were instructive, but this never really took off for me. Or extra precisely, it hasn’t but taken off for me. In “Outlining with Note Cards, Part 2: Seeking Wisdom,” I talked about Holly Lisle’s recommendation on “Plotting Under Pressure.” I’m going to do this: create a plot like this, then write it begin-to-end in November as part of . . . . . . drum roll, please . . . NaNoWriMo I kinda tried to begin that after, 5 years ag o, but let’s say that this year, we’ll truly make it occur. So let’s get that note card plot began the primary week in September, do some worldbuilding in October, and write the dang thing in November. Click over and read that post from Holly Lisle, I’ll wait. Okay, welcome again. This seemed like enjoyable to me, and you understand what? It was fun. Let’s take this in order, beginning with Ms. Lisle’s “Preliminaries”: In order to create this plot out of skinny air, you’re going to have to do a little bit of book dissection. You’re going to have to guess about the following issues in advance: I already had an idea. For a very long time I’ve wanted to write down a dungeon crawl in space. I received’t bore you with one other treatise on how much I love house opera science fiction, and you understand I’m a gamer from method back. These are two great loves that, like peanut butter and chocolate, are destined to be collectively. Available now! I also recently wr ote a brief story for the Pro Se Productions anthology Write to the Cover referred to as “Bella Lucky and the Titan of Tarvos.” Bella Lucky is my homage to Isaac Asimov’s Lucky Starr, mixed with all the great pulp archetypes, and conjured up within the form of a cop in the far future. The primary area opera premise, also properly consistent with Asimov’s setting for Lucky Starrâ€"however made my own, of courseâ€"is that humankind has colonized the solar system. Bella Lucky is Saturnian, and her beat includes all the various moons of Saturn. I had a good time with Bella and needed to send her off on more adventures, so when this exercise came up, she was the primary individual I thought of. She didn’t even should audition. You know I love monsters, too, so this might be Bella vs. monsters within the space opera version of a “dungeon.” I picked out an attention-grabbing moon that starts with the letter M and voila! Bella Lucky and the Monsters of Methone is (almost) born . Thinking again to my own advice, through Dani Shapiro, to start out off writing a short, bad guide, and with Novemberâ€"National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)â€"arising, this is a pure. I need to write down a short, dangerous, enjoyable pulp space opera dungeon crawl starring a character I already feel pretty secure with. Go me. So following Holly Lisle’s recommendation, combined with NaNoWriMo’s fundamental parameters and the dungeon crawl idea I knew that Bella could be my primary POV character, and he or she would be a part of a “dungeon get together” that must also include some space opera version of a magic-consumer, a thief, and a cleric. Bella’s a “fighter.” One of the opposite three is the suspected villain, and another of the opposite three is the actual villain. This is me additionally taking my own advice to make use of role-taking part in games as storytelling resourcesâ€"as long as you make them your individual. What an area opera model of a magic-pers on or a cleric seems like is something I haven’t quite nailed down yet, however there shall be no magic or gods on this future solar system, so we’ll see. The cleric is a physician, I guess, right? NaNoWriMo says 50,000 wordsâ€"feels like a short guide to me, so 50,000 words it's. I actually have established by myself that the perfect chapter is 2500 words, in order that’s how long my “scenes” are going to be. That means I need twenty of them to make 50,000 phrases. That math is easy enough even I can do it! (With a calculator.) Continuing to take Ms. Lisle’s recommendation I broke out those scenes by POV, in order that the first POV character (Bella) gets the most, the second POV character will get some more, and the opposite two share the rest. I went with Bella: 10, Dr. Niu (the villain/cleric): 6, Stas (the suspected villain, magic-consumer): 2, and final however not least Hunter (thief): 2. I like a number of POVs as a lot or more than the following guy, however thi s book really feels as though it might benefit from a tighter concentrate on Bella, so she will get a full half the e-book. Then Holly Lisle says: Break Out the Index Cards This subsequent bit is pure fun. And boy was it ever. I counted out twenty index playing cards: one per chapter/scene. For now, I’m contemplating each chapter a scene, though there’s no explicit cause that needs to be true. At the top of each index card I wrote the POV character’s name, so ten cards said BELLA, six playing cards said Dr. NIU, two playing cards mentioned STAS, and two playing cards said HUNTER. Then I started writing out scenes, as Holly Lisle recommends, in no specific order. I knew I needed this story to be a dungeon crawl, so meaning it needs MONSTERS and TRAPS/TRICKS. In most of those scenes I wrote these first, ensuring that there have been plenty of both, with a few extra monsters than traps/tricks. Because I like monsters, and that’s adequate cause for lots of monsters. Here are a f ew examples of these random scenes: BELLA injured by MONSTER has to rely on Dr. Niu Note that I’m already beginning to suppose in terms of characters interacting with each other. And that’s simply as a lot element as I currently have for that scene. Dr. Niu alone, gathers data, releases MONSTER This is the villain doing one thing villainous. STAS saves the day by overcoming TRAP/TRICK has doubts about Bella Note that in this scene, a personality does something energetic, and in so doing, interacts in an fascinating (I hope) way with one other character within the story. BELLA has to battle MONSTER all by herself Because this is, after all, a story about Bella Lucky and the Monsters of Methone. Here’s the card with probably the most text: HUNTER discovers the reality about Dr. Niu -tries to inform Bella -leaves message, however interrupted by TRAP/TRICK Dr. Niu leaves him to die Bella reveals up simply too late This scene idea impressed some thinking about Bella and her basic c haracter arc. In the brief story it’s established that Bella is a fairly good cop. She tries actually onerous and just loves every second of it. She has braveness and brains to spare, but she’s still not terribly good at it. In particular, she has some trouble with the physical abilitiesâ€"she can’t shoot to save lots of her life and her driving leaves one thing to be desired. But as her name implies, she has virtually supernatural good luck. In this story she’s discovered to depend on that luck, and I have to punish her for that. She needs to know that she will’t all the time depend on luck, particularly when different individuals’s lives hang in the balance. This might be a revelation Bella has to develop by way of. This “complicated” scene drives to that when she fails to prevent (spoiler alert!) Dr. Niu from killing Hunter. I really let myself have a ball with this, although it was a little more difficult in relation to placing the scenes in the order you want. B ut I did that, and did it pretty quickly. What I’ve ended up with is the fastest though most simple, virtually completely element-free start on a top level view I’ve ever put together. It will definitely make for a brief, unhealthy e-book. Or will it? Remember: No plan survives contact with the enemy. So after I start fleshing these fundamental scenes out, inventing monsters, doing extra worldbuilding, pondering much deeper into the characters, and so on, I hereby leave myself open to raised ideas. I wonder how close to this 20-index card tough define I’ll be when I really begin writing? I know for sure it's going to bear solely a passing resemblance to the completed brief, bad guide. And that will fall away in the revision (and growthâ€"50,000 phrases is kinda not fairly lengthy sufficient for me) course of. Still, I feel pretty good about what I’m armed with and I can see making a go of this in November. I wouldn’t use this approach if I have been sitting down to put in writing the Great American Novel, nevertheless it was perfect for a NaNoWriMo area opera dungeon crawl. Try it! â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans I think the reply to your query about who's the magic consumer in a Space Opera is the tech guy. The pc whiz who can fix any expertise and write software program to make it work. I did go in that path, however I’m apprehensive that might be too obvious? Now I’m kind of leaning towards some type of marketing consultant/professor kindâ€"less concerning the tech than the “e-book learnin'” behind it? Hmm… considering…