Friday, 06 July 2007
Planning Writing Projects
The sun has returned! :D
My latest writing project is doing nicely, too. I haven't started writing it yet, because I've been making notes about the characters. Next I am going to loosely plan the chapters (at least the first few, anyway), and then I can start with the hard work of writing the actual story!
I find that the level and type of planning that I do before writing a novel varies from project to project. It depends in part on the story, I guess, but mainly I think it depends on where the inspiration came from. For instance...
When I am inspired by dreams, the story idea usually bugs me into making a few notes the morning afterwards, and then either that day or a few days later I am driven to start writing the story, while adding to my notes as I go along. The notes usually consist of roughly what's going to happen, with me making more detailed Chapter Breakdowns as I write the story.
However, when an idea enters my head seemingly from nowhere (although usually based on some kind of past experience in a vague way), the story takes longer to begin. I need to flesh out the basic idea more beforehand and perhaps get to know the characters better.
Sometimes I write a short story, and later come back to it and want to write more. In this case, I'm usually not too strict with planning, but make some notes on what needs to happen and where I plan to end up.
My murder mystery novel (written about six to eight years ago) started with very little planning - I didn't even know who the murderer was going to be when I started! All the characters were loosely based on friends, and the plan was to have as much scandal as possible. However, the first draft was only half the size I intended and was very unrealistic, as a result of this. But it was fun to write!
The rewrite of the novel (undertaken in April 2007) involved a lot more research and planning. In fact, ever since I finished the first draft, I have been researching police investigative techniques and procedures, although in an as-and-when I see something useful way, treating it like a hobby. Then I made detailed plans of the characters - who to cut out, who to merge into one character, whether or not they needed personality transplants, etc. Then I started making notes in a notebook about plot changes (there were a LOT), extra scenes, who knew what, and things like that. As a result, the second draft is a lot better, and a decent novel length, too! And the rewrite was fun, too!
This latest novel, I started with a notebook for my planning, as is my usual habit (I have thousands of notebooks, but whenever I start a new project I have great difficulty finding one that's just 'right'). However, I have quickly migrated to the laptop, and am using Open Office Calc to put everything together in. I've decided that, with timelines and such, it's going to be easier to find the relevant bits of information if I can use a search function, rather than trying to scan my handwriting with my eyes.
This has lead me onto thinking about software to help with this kind of thing. Does anyone know of any that are good? How do they work? I know of Ariadne but I've never had a chance to try it out. I'm curious as to whether it would be worthwhile. As stated above, I don't even have a standard style of planning a novel, so the software would have to be adaptable to suit my needs. It would also be cool if it were purple. ;)
Anyway, that's a bit of info on what goes on when I'm planning my writing projects. I often blog about my experiences actually writing the novels, but I've rarely explained what happens first. Now you know!
Gotta go now - music beckons!
