Reviews of your writing – What NOT to do

Oh wow.  Negative reviews, eh?  In case you haven’t seen it yet, I am writing this post to link you to the perfect of example of how not to respond to a negative review of your writing.  (It’s not even that negative a review, to be honest, but hey.)  (Link via How Publishing Really Works - if you don’t already read, subscribe!) 

Not only is the author’s* response utterly astonishing, but she doesn’t see her mistake (both in response and in the original book).

This made me think about the value of receiving negative reviews and constructive criticism.  I can only see that this reiterates the importance of having an honest writing group or buddy who will get their red pen out as readily as their words of encouragement. 

As writers, it is our duty to hone our craft and knowledge of the English language and to shape our novels to be the best that they can be.  If this involves paying/befriending/kidnapping someone who knows their ‘there’ from their ‘their’ or an apostrophe from a semi-colon, then so be it. 

OK, so I was joking about the kidnapping, but not the rest. 

And beyond any philosophical writerly duty, just be a decent human being who has the good grace and professionalism to leave reviewers alone.

Good grief, what is the world coming to!

* though I hesitate to call her an author considering her disgusting behaviour and low level of pride in her novel to ‘release’ it into the world in that state.

Read Full Post »

Graduation The Second

Hello hello!  I’m very sleepy after a looooong day.  Here’s a picture of what I did today:

And here is a slightly edited version of a comment I just made on Miss Rosemary’s blog about today and the whole Master of Arts experience, because I’m very sleepy and should be in bed (and because it pretty much sums up what I want to say):

Yep, today I did the whole rigmarole of silly gown, silly hat and silly hood-thing, walked across the stage with a hundred other people collecting various other qualifications.  And although I finished the course back in September and received my results around November, today did feel like the culmination of that year’s hard work and I felt bloody proud.  I’ve got half a novel that received, according to one tutor, the highest grade she’s ever awarded (I was speechless for a while after reading that comment, I can tell you!) and I’ve got a Master of Arts with Distinction, but more importantly, I feel that I have the tools and the support (from coursemates who have become great friends) to actually complete that novel.  While I learnt more on my Bachelors (Creative Writing with English Literature), I achieved more on my Masters.

So, yeah, it’s definitely worth it.   Go for it, and I hope you love it as much as I did.

That photo is of me with two of those lovely people: I’m a lucky girl to find half a dozen people who have become dear friends and excellent writing buddies.  I’d like to thank them all – they know who they are.

So this is for them and for anyone else doing a writing course or thinking of doing one (I can only recommend them from my experiences), and for all the people who pursue their passions in life, even when the bank manager (or anyone else) would prefer you took that job as a lawyer: HUZZAH!

Yep, clear blue skies – it was positively torrential when we went into the ceremony, but we came out to glorious, glaring sunshine … maybe the weather Gods were smiling on our success.

And, finally, here’s a pretty photo – the view from our hotel room:

Now THAT is what I call a sea view!

Night, night, all!

Read Full Post »

Writing progress – additional

In which I get to be all smug because another 600+ word day (after a pretty crappy Monday at work, no less!) means that I’ve now broken through 50,000 words (50,560 – wooo!) and (yes, AND) I’m already past my target total for the end of the week (50,554).

"Well hurrah for that!"

Read Full Post »

Writing Progress

I’ve not mentioned my WIP in a while – for multiple reasons progress has been somewhere between slow and non-existent for several months, but the past couple of weeks I’ve been slowly getting back on the horse.  Momentum is the most important thing for me in terms of getting those words on the page, so I’ve been working to write a little bit every day.

My method, uber-geeky as it is, is to give myself a minimum number of words to do that day (the other important thing for me is having a sense of avhievement, you see!) … that’s not the geeky bit, oh no, the geeky bit is the table I draw up – it looks something like this (remember my love of lists?):

Date    Words Due   Words Done   Projected Total   Actual Total

Mon     200                452                 47,000                 47,252

Tues    etc…

And it covers two sheets of A4 paper front and back, running up until roughly 120,000/end of October.

Yep.  That geeky.  I did warn you.

As I’m just starting up again, I’ve set myself a low target for the first couple of weeks, just 200 words per day. I know that’s a very low target, but my writing confidence is terribly tenuous at the moment and I think of it this way: if I write 400 words when my target was 200, I’ll feel great; if I write 400 words when my target was 600, I’ll have failed and will feel rubbish.  Does that make sense?  I hope so, because then, once I’ve got that boost from reaching my target every day, I’ll be upping my target to 400 (in about a week), and up again a week or two later.  When I was writing T&Gw for my Masters, I was writing a minimum of 750 words per day (some days this ended up being as much as 1,500, and that’s on work-days with cleaning, cooking, etc), so I want to get back up to that level.

Anyway, the reason for all this explanation is that I’m really pleased – today I really didn’t feel like sitting down and writing, but I dutifully made myself (reminding myself that the word-count fairies would come after me otherwise – they’re scary little blighters!) and ended up writing the most I’ve managed to write in one day for a very long time: over 650 words.  It might not seem like much (especially for you super-human people who can sit and write 3,000+ words in a day – how do you manage that?!), but for the girl getting back on that writing horse, who was only looking to write 200 words, it’s kind of a break-through moment.  And hopefully it’s a good sign that I can get my first draft finished and begin on the editing by the end of this year … Something tells me I’m going to need those lucky symbols!

Read Full Post »

WLTM Strong Female Characters … Whatever that means?

I cringe when I see them done badly.  I probably cringe even more when there aren’t any.  I have a hard time reading novels without them.  Some of them are my absolute favourite pieces of fiction ever.  It’s perhaps not so much of a mystery what I’m talking about if you glance at the title of this post.  Yep, we’re talking ‘strong female characters’.

A couple of month’s ago, when a post by the lovely ladies of Let The Words Flow (arbiters of wonderful writing/publisher-seeking advice and support) went off-topic an interesting if brief conversation about what constitutes a strong female character followed.  Everyone felt that there were many different takes on the ‘strong woman’ and almost as many misinterpretations.  So, here goes with my take (hopefully not a misinterpretation) and perhaps, if you’d be kind enough, then I’d love to hear your responses as readers, writers, men and women: what does the phrase ‘strong female character’ mean to you?

I think we can all agree that The Smurfette Principle is exactly why stories of all kinds need good female characters.  (I love TV Tropes!)

We all know too well those clichés of what women do and are in fiction.  Gods, that sounds a bit pretentious, doesn’t it?  Well, what I mean, really, is that all too often women are the main character’s wife/daughter/love-interest/mother – they’re defined by male characters and their own interest in men.  Even when they are the stars of the show, sometimes they do little more than look for how they can become wives/love-interests/mothers.  For a great example of what I mean (which explains it far better than I have), check out TV Tropes’ article on The Bechdel Test, which a film/book/etc must pass by following these criteria:

1. it includes at least two women,
2. who have at least one conversation
3. about something other than a man or men.

Stories with Strong Female Characters have to pass this test for me to really enjoy them: even though it’s a romance, Pride and Prejudice passes, Lizzie and her sisters discuss the state of the family affairs, religion (even if Mary is quite utterly silly!) and dressing for balls.  (And even the conversations involving Lydia are a prime example of the perils of failing the Bechdel Test and having thoughts of nothing other than men – she is portrayed as a foolish girl and ends up suitably punished, married to a nasty piece of work who will never be able to afford the luxuries she desires.  Even Austen got it a couple of centuries ago.)

So what about this strong female character, then?

She is woman, hear her roar!  She doesn’t need a man, she doesn’t get caught by the Big Bad and she can save the world!  She’s a strong female character, right?

Uhm.  No.

Wait, you meant strong as in muscular, right?

Uhm.  No.

The problem is that somewhere along the line our outcry against the weak, swooning lady, desperately in need of a hero was misunderstood: we wanted real characters, well thought-out, believable, people in their own right who just happened to be female; we got women who were more masculine (wow, she’s a good shot!), less feminine (I don’t wear skirts, they’re for girls!  This makes me strong.), attractive and strong in terms of being good at stuff.  Somehow we ended up with Lara Croft – intelligence, nifty shooting/jumping skills and hot!  Overthinking It gets this idea across perfectly with the example of that annoying woman in Transformers – Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women – here’s a taster of their point:

Image from Overthinking It – see link!

Though, physically strong characters can be strong female characters, too: the first example that leaps to my mind is Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter of Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion.  She starts off young and head-strong, but grows and learns throughout the trilogy.  Thoughout she is flawed and believable as a person and nor does she fall at the feet of the first man to flutter his eyelashes at her or beat her in battle.  Paks’ depth of character prevent her from being a failed strong woman.

I read the books a long time ago, but whenever I think of them, I always remember a scene where she is being measured for some clothes and the tailor exclaims at her wide neck: this isn’t some weedy woman weilding an unrealistically large sword, Moon has realised that someone wearing a heavy helm day in, day out, would have a muscular neck – the reality of Paks’ character is more important than her being attractive (at least in a traditional way).

So, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that a strong female character is a strong character, flawed and active, with depth and quirks, who just so happens to be female and is not the only female.

Read Full Post »

Tools of the Trade – The Writing Box

I was going to contain my excitement and not say anything on this blog about this particular thing until I had it in my possession.  But I’m clearly not very good at that, because here I am about to gush about the wond’rousness of the very apt MA graduation gift from my Lovely Mum …

An antique writing box.  AKA, a writing slope or lap desk (though, I think that technically they are all slightly different things, the three terms do tend to be used interchangably, so I will do the same).  Isn’t that a brilliant present idea for a Creative Writing MA graduand?  (I know, my Mum’s brilliant!)

I can remember seeing these on TV as a child (probably on the Antiques Roadshow) and thinking they were the coolest thing since, well, ever, but not knowing much about them, I’ve been doing a little research.  So here’s a little guided tour around a gorgeous Regency rosewood writing box that recently sold on Ebay (for far more than I could aford, alas!).

Regency writing box recently sold on ebay.

A writing box from the outside apears much like any other rectangular box and may be plain or richly decorated.  It’s only once you open it that you realise that this is more than ‘just another box’ – a handsome slope covered in baise, velvet or leather (usually with gilt and/or blind embossed decoration, a pen holder (perhaps stained with the ink of some late-night letter-writing), an ink well (or perhaps a couple in different colours for the adventurous or the accountant amongst you) and maybe even a pair of candle sconces.

Interior of the same box.

And those writing flaps lift up, leaving space for writing (or painting/drawing) materials, important papers and the like:

What lies beneath.

While these boxes came with locks (specially made to lie flush when unlocked, so they don’t dig into one’s arms or catch on sleeves while writing), one can never be sure who might manage to poke around in one’s writing box (ooh-er!), so where can a young woman of society keep her lover’s letters away from prying eyes?  (Or indeed, keep her cash from being misplaced, as almost happened to Jane Austen when her writing box was mis-placed on a chaise heading to Gravesend!)  Fear not, for some clever little writing boxes (including this one) have a cunning solution – secret drawers:

Ssssh - don't tell!

The apparent back panel is in fact removed with a little press in the right place to reveal these delightful little drawers.  And if all that isn’t enough storage space for you, Regency boxes and some Victorian ones often had a larger side drawer that opened from the outside:

Document storage, creation and secrecy?  In essence, the lap desk was the historical gentleperson’s laptop.  (Instead of secret drawers we have encryption and passwords – I know which I feel more secure with!)

What I find even more exciting is the thought that all those 18th and 19th century writers we love (and sometimes hate) penned their words in such boxes – Byron, Dickens, Austen.  This page has some interesting information about Jane Austen’s writing box (upon which Pride & Prejudice was written!) and the escapade I outlined earlier when it was almost lost (but thankfully recovered!).  Here is a box apparently similar to Austen’s and Jane Austen’s World has an image of the actual desk, which was donated to the British Library by one of her non-direct descendants.

The best site I found for information on writing boxes is Antigone’s guide to Antique Writing Boxes and Lap Desks.  It contains an absolute wealth of knowledge and has given me some sense of the development of the box and features to look out for.  Do go there for a more in depth look at writing slopes and boxes.

Approaching this as a buyer, the first thing I realised rather swiftly – buying from an antiques dealer is going to be considerably more expensive than buying from ebay.  Out-of-our-price-range more expensive.  The other option could be a local auctioneer – Arthur Johnson & Sons – who hold auctions every Saturday and list their items online from 6pm the Thursday before.

So, this gentlewoman is on the hunt for the Perfect Writing Box…

Read Full Post »

One Sentence Summary – Contest Alert!

A quick post to make sure you writerly types out there know about Rachelle Gardner’s very useful and informative post on how to write a One Sentence Summary of your novel.  What’s more, it’s a competition, so what are you waiting for?  Get over there, read and apply her lessons and you could win a year’s subscription to WritersMarket.com!

Read Full Post »

Gone Sailin’ – Things to read while I’m away

HMS Victory, dry-docked in Portsmouth

I’m going to be away for most of next week – I’m visiting the seaside, and this first-rate ship of the line,* huzzah! - and I didn’t want to leave my lovely readers adrift, so here is some recommended reading:

For Readers (AKA everyone!)

• Want a tip on how to maintain your 18th century love affair?  Lauren over at Marie Antoinette’s Gossip Guide has just the thing – a fab, fun post that looks like it might become part of a series!  (I certainly hope so!).
• I do enjoy a bit of gender inversion and Rowenna of Hyaline Prosaic has posted a saucy 18th century print showing just that.  Be sure to read the comments, too, there are some interesting ideas going on about the symbolism of the parrot and dog in the image.

For Writers

• Picture the scene – you’ve found yourself in a lift with a literary agent, you’re chatting, the topic of your finished manuscript comes up, you’ve got 2 minutes to wow them and get them wanting more – GO!  Does this scenario fill you with dread?  Me too.  Thankfully, help is at hand from a very successful agent: Rachelle Gardner tells us the Secrets of a Great Pitch to help us prepare for just such a moment and even has some advice for agents and editors to remember when us poor writers garble over our pitches!
• I am as guilty of this as any other writer – saying and thinking I don’t have time to write.  Funnily enough, I read two posts relating to this over the past week or so.  First Rachelle Gardner wrote on What We Give Up, raising some hard-hitting points – us writers can’t do everything, we have to prioritise and sometimes we have to give things up.  So often modern life encourages us to ‘have everything’ that we forget that in order to have the things we really want, we have to bid farewell to the less important things.  And just today, Kim from What Women Write wrote about excuses not to write - we all make them and fool ourselves into believing them.  We all need to overcome them.  I desperately need to get over those excuses, cut down on the excess and give up some things in order to get on with the important thing: writing. 
• Something to think about and discuss – how do you Pick your Perfect Title?  Go and join in with the writers at Let the Words Flow.

For Stitchers

• That Duchess is at it again, tempting everyone with her gorgeous 17th century dress – go there, follow the project, be wowed!
• ALERT: Hip pads are not just for the 18th century!
• Sew Retro is home of many, many lovely ladies who are kind enough to share their images and experiences of working with vintage patterns – do have a read!

And as for what I’ll be reading while I’m gone?  I’ve got half a manuscript to go over with my red pen and get back to writing.

So, I wish you adieu, my dears – when I return from Portsmouth, it’s The Boy’s Birthday and his parents are visiting, I should be back and a-posting around the 24th May.  Wishing you all happy writing, pretty stitching and fun in the sun in the meantime!

* HMS Victory is dry-docked in Portsmouth – ’tis a rather pretty ship (am I allowed to say ‘pretty’ about a ship?) launched in 1765, so it’s from the century everyone loves!

Read Full Post »

Writing, Reading and Loving

These three things are inextricably interlinked for me.  When I am reading a story I love, I feel most inspired to write.  And, I like to think I’m aware enough that I don’t fall into that trap of writing like what I’m currently reading, which I hear/read so often from writers – ‘I don’t read anything while I’m writing a novel in case it subconsciously influences me’.  Which is fair enough, but I do think that reading is the best way to learn about writing, closely followed by writing (see below for my justification of this!).  And if you want to get published, then it’s even more vital that you know what is already out there, what is selling and what the conventions are, whether you intend to follow them or not.

Now, to qualify that off-hand comment about the best way to learn to write … This is, of course, just one woman’s opinion, but I think that reading extensively provides you with the basis for any learning you might do through writing itself.  Before I ever attempted to write myself and before I ever had any formal teaching on writing, I read.  As a child I lived in imagined worlds more than I lived in the ‘real world’ (and if I had my own way, I probably would now, too).  This meant that when I came to write and to learn about story I had an instinctive understanding of structure, character, dialogue and so on.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was a basis.  It meant that I could think of examples of the kind of scene or plot I was trying to write or that someone else was trying to teach me about.  It meant that somewhere in the back of my mind a voice said that you needed tension and climaxes and resolutions long, long before I ever read about those things in ‘how to write’ books.

Reading was the underpinning for the rest of my learning about writing.  I cannot stress the importance of it enough.  (Plus, if you want to write and be published, then buying and borrowing books from the library is a great way to support your industry.)

If you want some more writing tips, here’s an interesting article from The Guardian – Ten Rules for Writing Fiction.  (And yes, I need for work on number 5 – me and my addiction to exclamation marks!)  I got the link via the often funny, ever enlightening Nathan Bransford.  He does a fantastic post on the week’s happenings in publishing – if you want to be published or work in the industry, you’d be well-advised to read it!  In fact, just subcribe to his blog and read it all – you’ll find something useful, I promise!

And if you were wondering where the start of this post was going – it was further praise for Robin Hobb.  I am loving Ship of Magic like a great big obsessive weirdo.  I know I am loving it that much, because I find myself thinking about it when I’m doing other things and I am constantly looking forward to the next time I get a chance to read it.  And as it’s lunchtime, that’s now. 

What I bought at the weekend!

(Though, before I go to eat and read – if you have any recommendations along the lines of ‘if you like Robin Hobb, you’ll love …’ I’d love to hear them.  Indeed, any fantasy recommendations with good female protagonists always go down well with me!)

Read Full Post »

Cunning Plans & Fiendish Plots

A classic subject for blogs and other discussions on writing is plotting and whether one is a ‘pantser’ (someone who flies by the seat of their pants, not someone who writes pants/crap plots) or a ‘planner’.  And who am I to argue with such time-honoured traditions?  Except for when it suits me, of course, but today, dear reader, it doesn’t suit me, so we’re going to look at plotting.

A cunning plan in action.

In the past I’ve been both pantser and a planner, usually working to a very extreme form of one or the other.  In the past I’ve also been a writer who managed about 5,000-10,000 words of a would-be novel and then found it fizzling out.  I don’t think this is a coincidence. 

I think one of the most important factors in completing the first draft of a novel (which is often half the battle) is finding the way that is right for you.  Now, I may be speaking prematurely as I am only about one third of the way through A Thief & A Gentlewoman, but I think I have found the way that is right for me.  And yes, I know I have repeated that phrase, but to me “the way that is right for you” is vital to everything in life.  I don’t generally believe in absolutes and I think something as personal as writing absolutely requires the proviso of “here’s my advice/experience, but if it doesn’t work for you, then throw it out the window”.

And with that proviso firmly in place, this is the method of plotting (fiendish, cunning or otherwise) that works for me and has allowed me to get far further on a project than ever before, and hopefully it will see me over the first draft finishing line … 

I start with a vague idea of what I want to happen and I turn to one of my favourite things in life to help me set it out:

• The
• bullet
• point
• list!

Each event that I have in the story gets its own bullet point:

• Girl meets boy. 
• Girl and boy find out they’re from warring families.
• Girl marries boy.
• The pressures of their warring families mean girl and boy kill themselves. 
• Families learn a lesson abut feuding (we hope!).

It is meant to be super basic at the moment – we’re talking vague ideas.  Eventually, however, this will become a list with a bullet-point for each scene in the story.  (OK, I know that sounds daunting, but I don’t find it so, especially as it’s written over time with scenes added and moved around as ideas evolve.)

I usually have these vague ideas floating about and then start fleshing out the characters involved before I come to this bullet-point process as this allows me to know how they will behave, but also whose eyes I want to see this particular scene through.  For really important events, I tend to overlap viewpoints, especially when it can create humour, tension or empathy by showing the different ways people can see the same incident.

From there I look at my scenes and think about what needs to happen between them, how the story will move from one scene to the next.  I also consider what will cause those events and how the cause will shape the form of the actual event – for example what is the exact form the warring family pressure that make boy and girl kill themselves?  This will give me scenes that come before as well as give me more detail for the original bullet points, so it might start to look something like this:

• Girl meets boy.
• Girl and boy find out they’re from warring families.
• Girl marries boy in secret.
• Boy argues with girl’s cousin (because cousin killed Boy’s best friend) and ends up killing him in a fight.
• Boy gets banished for the killing.
• Girl’s family arranges for her to marry another man, not knowing she’s already married.
• Priest comes up with a plan to save the girl from bigamy and keep the couple together.
• Girl takes poison and appears dead to her family.
• Priest sends message to Boy, telling him about the plan and that Girl isn’t really dead, but just seems it.  Boy doesn’t get message.
• Boy hears girl is dead and rushes to her tomb.  Unable to bear living without her, he kills himself.
• Girl wakes and finds Boy dead.  Unable to bear living without him, she kills herself.
• Families learn a lesson abut feuding (we hope!).

Still quite simplified, but you can see that we’ve fleshed things out a bit and that the original “The pressures of their warring families mean girl and boy kill themselves” bullet point has actually become two scenes as the idea has developed as we’ve worked out the specifics and the causes of the event.  That scene has also split to allow for the two viewpoints.  (Of course, this is Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, so as it’s not a novel it doesn’t have the two view-points as such, but if you were writing it as a novel with a third person narrator close to a character it would have to – Romeo is not alive when Juliet dies so the narrator can’t be near him for both events and Juliet is unconscious when Romeo dies so the narrator can’t be in her mind for both deaths.  Sorry, that’s quite a convoluted explanation, isn’t it?!) 

Non?

From there you also think about what is needed in this plot, such as the introduction of the key characters and setting up the idea of the feuding families (that latter of which old Shakey does with that brilliant “I do bite my thumb, sir!” opening scene) and add those in.  This is where I weave in the ‘set up’, by which I mean things such as the clues seen early on in Poirot but not initially appreciated for their full significance (like “Ah, but you have been to Egypt, non?  And so had the killer!  Duh duh duuuuuuh!”), or the mention of that clever little weapon hidden in our heroine’s knickers that will save her life in the penultimate scene (such as Roald Dahl’s Little Red Riding Hood who “whipped a pistol from her knickers” and swiftly dispatched of poor little wolfy).  So you go back and add an early scene where the protagonist overhears a conversation but fails to appreciate its significance, and another scene where we meet the protagonist’s teacher who also gives them a gift or teaches them a technique, which of course will save them in the end. 

Which also reminds me – I try to make my scenes work hard for their place in my story.  By which I mean that scenes have to fulfil more than one role, such as the above introduction of the teacher and of the important object.  A scene that is only doing one job just isn’t pulling its weight.  Sometimes it can be hard to imagine how you can make that scene that introduces Bob do something else, but if you give it some thought and look at how other people do it, you’ll soon impress yourself with your cunning by showing the reader Bob’s relationship with protagonist Jane, showing characterisation of Jane and Bob (Jane through her thoughts, words and actions and Bob through his actions and what he says to Jane) and setting up mention of the strange spate of catnappings on page 12 of the local newspaper that Jane is using to wrap up the glass Bob just broke (because he’s clumsy which is part of the characterisation you’re showing to the reader) … and so on. 

At this stage I find the major scenes tend to become quite long in their bullet points because there are so many important details that I need to remember to include, which is great because those major scenes can be rather daunting to write and can be easy to get lost in.  This bullet-point method also allows me to tick off scenes as I write them, which gives the list-writer in me a sense of achievement and reminds the writer in me that I’m one step closer to finishing the first draft. 

It’s also a great foundation for those snippets of conversation that come to you on the bus.  By knowing that at some point Jane and Bob will have a discussion about Bob’s vegetarianism and Jane’s love of meat, my mind will have that idea on the back-burner and when I wake up with that great bit of punchy dialogue, I have somewhere I can keep it safe, rather than just writing it on a scrap of paper that gets lost or in a notebook and not being able to find it when I come to write the scene.  Because when I come to write the scene, I’ll have my bullet points (that usually get printed out and scribbled on and then re-typed and re-printed to include the scribblings when the paper’s about to fall apart) with that snappy conversation and I can decide whether I still think it’s great or whether I think “whatever was I thinking?!”

I enjoy the whole process of plotting in this way, it’s a time for getting stuck on a problem, puzzling over it, then deciding to go for a bath and having that eureka(!) moment while you cook dinner.  It’s really fun weaving and winding your webs of intrigue and inter-connectedness – Hell, it’s the only way I can think of that allows a person to spend days fiendishly plotting without being a Bond villain!  And I do like a good bit of fiendish plotting.

Kitty doesn't care about plot, so long as kitty gets to sleep.

 Now, I know some argue that this approach doesn’t allow you any space for creativity – I’ve even said it myself in the past when I’ve been pantsing and even on previous attempts at planning – but I find this particular way of working does the opposite for me.  I can always change my bullet points at any time, I can copy and paste the order of events or just delete them, or split scenes up to allow for a flash-back half way through, but having that list there actually allows me more creativity when I’m doing the fun part of actually writing the scene.  Rather than sitting down and feeling tense and stifled because I’m thinking:

oh Gods, what’s meant to happen in this scene?  How on earth did I write myself into this rut?  I know I need to get to Lord Devilish’s house for the big climax, but how the Hell do I get there from here?!  Man, I really don’t want to write this scene if I’m just going to have to delete it when it comes to editing … Angst!

I get to say to myself:

OK, I know that Jane needs to ask Bob to the dance at Lord Devilish’s in this scene, and that he’ll think he’s finally getting lucky, but that he’ll be disappointed because she’ll explain she’s only doing it because she needs a date who’s quite plain and therefore won’t draw attention to himself.

And I get the simple enjoyment of that dialogue with a bit of sulking by Bob and back-pedalling by Jane and those fun little thrilling signs for the reader that they both like each other but don’t want to say, whilst still being safe in the knowledge that I’m taking the story in the right direction. 

In short, the bullet points tell me what has to happen in the scene, but I get to enjoy seeing how the characters take me there – and sometimes they surprise me.

If you’re stuck in a plot-rut or just can’t get past chapter 5, then maybe it’s time to try something different, try pantsing or this planning method, it might just help.  And scribblers, do tell me about your own cunning planning methods – I love to hear about the different ways people work!

Read Full Post »