Planning, planning and more planning.
Hey guys, sorry it's been so long, life took over for a while and then I decided to rebuild my computer.
Anyway that's enough of that.
Today I'm going to be talking about planning, and how it is the one thing every author should do at some point.
To be up front with you guys I've always been more of the dive in and see where a story takes me kind of writer, but at some point I sit down with all the desperate story elements I've been letting romp along the page and try and come up with some coherent way of getting from A to B. This usually happens when I reach the inevitable point when steam peters out on my first rush of ideas.
But then I sit down and do character bios, timelines and various other ways of plotting out (in the case of Delivery a long list of ways Sam was going to nearly die!), and all manner of other thins to put off going back to the writing before I know what I'm doing new.
(In much the same way I started this blog while I way for the second Draft of Delivery to gestate.)
The following the story plan for Delivery. This was always a simple sequence of events, tasks and near death experiences, this and the Map (to follow at some point) were the only real planning that this story got. As I've always said (and will cover in grater detail in another post) Delivery is "all about the journey".
1. Castlewood – Deckers Insulin
2. Return to Abbott
a. Go to see the king
b. Assassin attack
3. Escape from the castle
4. The Petal
5. Crow’s Leigh/ Gul Ford
a. The crossing
b. Reunion and finding Sam’s stuff
6. Haven Pass
a. Assassin attack
b. Dust Bunnies
7. The Crashed Temple –ADAM
8. Gatwick
9. Clint’s Airship
a. The crash
b. Slavers
10. Forest Capital
11. Millais Believers
12. Isle of Tan
a. Fleeing the assassins
13. The Albatross
14. Slavers Attack
a. Caged
15. Escape and Assassin Attack
16. Sunrise Isle
a. Cannibals]
b. (not)SHODAN
c. Meeting Adrian
17. The Crashed Temple (trust me I’m an archaeologist)
a. The transporter
18. Landing site finding out what’s happened
a. Darian’s cart
19. Getting back into the city
20. The 12 hour war
a. The orphanage
b. Garry and Martin arrive (Richard killed)
c. Airship to the palace (the last bad idea)
d. Confrontation with the First Minister
21. Ending
Anyway that's enough of that.
Today I'm going to be talking about planning, and how it is the one thing every author should do at some point.
To be up front with you guys I've always been more of the dive in and see where a story takes me kind of writer, but at some point I sit down with all the desperate story elements I've been letting romp along the page and try and come up with some coherent way of getting from A to B. This usually happens when I reach the inevitable point when steam peters out on my first rush of ideas.
But then I sit down and do character bios, timelines and various other ways of plotting out (in the case of Delivery a long list of ways Sam was going to nearly die!), and all manner of other thins to put off going back to the writing before I know what I'm doing new.
(In much the same way I started this blog while I way for the second Draft of Delivery to gestate.)
The following the story plan for Delivery. This was always a simple sequence of events, tasks and near death experiences, this and the Map (to follow at some point) were the only real planning that this story got. As I've always said (and will cover in grater detail in another post) Delivery is "all about the journey".
1. Castlewood – Deckers Insulin
2. Return to Abbott
a. Go to see the king
b. Assassin attack
3. Escape from the castle
4. The Petal
5. Crow’s Leigh/ Gul Ford
a. The crossing
b. Reunion and finding Sam’s stuff
6. Haven Pass
a. Assassin attack
b. Dust Bunnies
7. The Crashed Temple –ADAM
8. Gatwick
9. Clint’s Airship
a. The crash
b. Slavers
10. Forest Capital
11. Millais Believers
12. Isle of Tan
a. Fleeing the assassins
13. The Albatross
14. Slavers Attack
a. Caged
15. Escape and Assassin Attack
16. Sunrise Isle
a. Cannibals]
b. (not)SHODAN
c. Meeting Adrian
17. The Crashed Temple (trust me I’m an archaeologist)
a. The transporter
18. Landing site finding out what’s happened
a. Darian’s cart
19. Getting back into the city
20. The 12 hour war
a. The orphanage
b. Garry and Martin arrive (Richard killed)
c. Airship to the palace (the last bad idea)
d. Confrontation with the First Minister
21. Ending
Compare this to the plans for the as of yet unfinished Firewall Conspiracy. The mind mapping technique allows me to link together people, motivations and events in my mind, but dose inevitably end up looking like a hand drawn tesseract. This is much better for more complex stories with multiple layers to them (at least until you can't make out what's going on any more.
I will probably accompany this with a bullet list of events to pin down the chronological order and add in events that got missed off this because they were to throw away and I was running out of room on the page!
Thanks for sticking with me on this, and I'll try and show some actual story next time. If you want to see something specific (either a story I've mentioned or some part of writing) then let me know in the comments.
See you next time.
Rob
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