I started out with a single idea, I wanted the villain of the story to start out as the leader of the good guys and I wanted him to win in the middle in a decisive manner. Hence a horrific body count among the early characters. The the story would be about one or two character picking up the pieces while the whole world starts falling apart.
My first attempt was torrmented by inadequate planning, my characters just wandered off into pointlessness.
This time I have enough of a framework that I always know where I'm going even though I'm always tweaking the stuff in between. It seems to be working well for me.
Most of the major plot destinations I pretty much have visualized in my head like movie clips. There are so many moving parts however, that I have to outline to keep everything consistent. Once outlined, I just sort of visualize it and just try to describe what is going on in my head. I feel sort of like I'm watching a really long movie.
Amy's style makes me twitch just thinking about it but her end results are so great, it just serves as a wonderful example of what works for the individual writer.
Me, I'm also seat of the pants, but I'm very, very linear-- I have to write beginning to end. And I'm probably not so much seat of the pants, even because I've thought the story through so thoroughly, it's like I have it outlined in my head.
Usually, I'll write about 5-6 chapters, then as things start coalescing, I'll stop to write a chapter to chapter outline, if only so I don't forget certain tidbits I want to add in later.
I do make notes, just to clarify. Weird notes, sort of thought bubbles, about scenes or plot points, and like Barb that happens as I get closer to understanding where the story is going.
One thing I always have to do is go back and make sure I didn't lost the thread, especially in a romance -- see that the heroine still wants what she wanted in the beginning, or that certain conflicts got resolved.
It's all very messy and vague, but it usually works for me. I have learned that I do need a first draft I can then go over and tweak.
But I have writer friends who make, no kidding, color-coded charts, notecards, chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene outlines, character worksheets, the whole nine. That just ... baffles me. I like to brainstorm just with some ideas, sort of telling the initial story to myself, but that's about it.
And thank you, Barb.
::blushes::
I had to plan my next chapter since it involves a heist. I needed to know where everything is. Then, I needed to make the character's plan. Then, I needed to figure out everything that goes wrong. Finally, I had to figure out how they get out of it. I have diagrams.
The previous couple of chapters, no outline at all. Just a destination point.
In battle scenes and such, I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the parties and where they have to be when.
I'm too LD for that, but that's why one action sequence has made me all "Are we *really*, truly, sure about the writer thing? Because I'm sure you could find something else..."
And I was about to, too, but "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in."
But this is the closest I've ever come to walking away. So to speak.
But, you know, I admit it. I still want to write the next Big Fat Greek Bitch(/Ari) and get paid. Or something like that.(Although it's sad that that was in the first Entourage I ever saw back in'04 and I forgot about it, thereby forgetting why I think of one of my favorite '00s rom coms as My Big Fat Greek Bitch. Sorry, Ms. Vardalos...it's nothing personal.)
I got in about 1000 words on chapter 8 last night. If I get even a little bit of writing time tonight I should go over 50,000 words. About 1/4 of the way there now.
1000 words in I can see that chapter 8 will probably actually be 8 and 9. There's just too many things to stuff in there and I expect to go through a lot of words doing the heist.
A paltry 600 words or so last night. But I didn't have much time to work on it, about 50 minutes. I thought of some good tweaks while commuting though. A scene I decided to cut due to irrelevance I'm going to put back in and it will be quite relevant.
