As soon as the iPad inspired a slurry of Android clones I’m sure more than a few writers thought, “Now I can write that novel or screenplay in bed, waiting at the doctor office, or yes, even while sitting on the toilet!” But wait! Not so fast. How does the state of the art stack
Why shower crayons work: Routine. It forces us to focus and make decisions, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day. You don’t need hours, days, or weeks to make a decision. Most decisions can take place within a few seconds. Even the most creative thorny problems. You may not find the best
Novelists usually work by a process of drafting. They write straight through to a 1st draft. Then they change the things they don’t like in the 2nd draft, and iterate into a 3rd, etc. Drafting is a linear process. Plotting, also sometimes called ‘blocking,’ is used by script writers to establish economical scene flow.
Oct
31
Posted by : | On : October 31, 2007
I’ll be cheering from the sidelines this year, as last year I learned that word count (somewhat counter-intuitively) doesn’t necessarily equate with story progress. That and I’m knee deep in trying to finish previous years NaNo endeavors.
Good luck to those of you taking the plunge with National Novel Writing Month tomorrow. Perhaps in a year or two’s time, we’ll all need a National Novel Finishing Month.
Oct
26
Posted by : | On : October 26, 2007
Scenes make the best workflow. A scene is about the furthest you can break down your story into manageable bits in order to accomplish your goals. Lately though, I’ve been a little bit down on my process. The problem is even if you finish a scene it’s only 1/60th of your story. I don’t know about you, but I like better feedback than that. Completing 1/60th of my story isn’t satisfying to me. If you do a scene every day it still takes you sixty days, or two months. That’s not counting revisions.
And if you’re anything like me, you’ll cheat sometimes and skip a few days, or sometimes even a week if you’re busy with real life, work, etc. I have to remind myself sometimes that this is just a hobby. I don’t get to work on this for forty hours a week. If I did, progress would be much quicker.
So how can we keep the story broken down into manageable workflow in the form of scenes while still feeling good about the progress we make?
Oct
18
Posted by : | On : October 18, 2007
We usually find scene setups and payoffs under it’s more common name, foreshadowing. The problem is the definition of foreshadowing doesn’t necessarily teach you how to use it in a scene-centric way.
For that I’m going to reference a very popular and cheesy action movie from 1989.
Setups & Payoffs from Lethal Weapon 2
The Nail Gun
At the beginning of Lethal Weapon 2, we have a scene at Murtaugh’s house where it’s obvious there is work being done by a contractor. Riggs and Murtaugh find the contractor using a nail gun — a novelty item for the two men to admire.
At first glance this seems like a pointless scene, until later when Murtaugh is attacked in his house by The Bad Guys. Not having a weapon handy, he struggles to reach the nail gun left behind by the contractor — the nail gun that we, as the audience, knew existed because there was a scene showing off the setup.
Recent Comments