Drawing from the Well
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 166
You’ll see below why. I broke the last dry spell and I’ll break this one.
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 54%
Elegy: Page 15 of 89
Jessica Jones: S2E12 of 13
Again, see below for why I’m falling down on my goals.
Polishing the Well
This was a familiar sight for our family yesterday. That’s as far as I’ll go. We spent all day and part of the evening prepping for a trip and then I was up late working. We’re all exhausted but glad things went off without a hitch. Now to TRY to slip into a routine for the week.
Well Chat
Planning WAY ahead for incredible Moments of Awesome
Planning. Yes, this is where I let you into the twisty bits in my brain about being a long-term planner. I’ve said here before that I start with the end in mind and work my way backward to establish the key moments in a book.
The same is true of a series but on a much larger scale.
When I wrote Book One, I had an idea of how I wanted things to go. Frankly, what ended up being Book One was originally intended to only be the first half, but it was too long already so I slapped an ending on it and called it a day. And then rework rework rework rework rework…
At some point during one of my reworks (probably Meibor’s massive overhaul), I realized that I needed to know where these characters were going to I could start seeding things now. Meibor especially needed a complete series arc designed so I could figure out what he was even doing in the book in the first place. We’ll use him as a vague example.
So I figured out first whether he lived or died in the very end. Nope, no spoilers here. 😀 Once I had that, I started asking why A LOT. Why did his ending happen? Okay. How do we make that cooler? Got that. Now how does he get to this point? Well, he would need X, Y, OOH! and Z would be cool too. Let’s set those up. Check. Check. And check.
This iterative process continued until I had traced back to Book One. Now, without details, that probably doesn’t sound helpful. The point is that there were two key elements to being a long-term planner here: starting at the end and asking why. By crafting in reverse, only things that made sesnse one step away remained. Now, those individual steps could take a chaos-theory style route back to the beginning so that the route itself was hidden from the reader (which they ALL do; you’ll never see it all coming) but each step had to make sense at the moment it was taken.
I treat long-term planning like a treasure map. I determine different Moments of Awesome across the island of the series for the character(s) to bounce between. Then I figure out the dotted lines that connect them and voila! I have a plan.
I have to use analogy here because I can’t reveal details yet, but I hope you get the point here. Long-term planning comes down to taking the time, figuring out your endpoint(s), and connecting the dots. It sounds simple but it really is a lot of work when you’re literally manufacturing every little detail. I hope this helps.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG