Plotting Via Q&A

Lately I've found myself trying this method out. I plot a new story partially with writing down the concept/idea for the story, a quick synopsis, some fast character notes, and then I ask myself questions about it. It's not hard really. You just leave what you've written for a couple minutes, hours, or days, and then read it over and ask the questions that would pop into your head if you were the one being presented with this story.

These questions can be very basic, but they let your mind explore the story in a different way and works as a real test of how deep your idea is. For example, for a story I have plotting where someone comes out of retirement to face a foe from their past some of the Q&A goes like:

Q: Why is Miller coming back to face Sully?
A: Unfinished business from before

Q: What is the unfinished business?
A: Sully was responsible for the death of Miller's wife

Q: How was Sully responsible?
A: Part of an elaborate trap to bring Miller to his doom. Miller survived but int he process his wife - and he thought Sully - died.


Now, obviously Miller and Sully are place holder names, but you also see how it works. I'm not just questioning the idea but also the answers. In a sense it is like when a little kid sits and asks you "why" repeatedly until you are forced to just say "because" or get more and more elaborate in answers. Just like with that game the questioning will find the limit of your knowledge on a subject in your story, at which point you can decide if it is actually vital to know (it usually is, btw) or if it is something that is never likely to come up.

In essence, asking these questions helps find holes in your plot. I hesitated on that second question because I honestly had no idea when I initially planned things how/why Sully was responsible for the death of Miller's wife. The question string goes on further too though, asking about the trap, how it worked, and what exactly happened. These are things that in the writing could come up in flash backs, or you can reference to show a depth of history int he tale.

In other words, the Q&A helps you figure out just how big the iceberg of your story is. And just like the iceberg, you generally do want the majority of info to be lying beneath the surface, unable to be seen directly by the audience. They'll still know it is there though. It will show itself in how people act. It also gives you stuff to reveal as the tale goes on and on.

Music To Write To

Whether it is gaming and character themes or writing and playlists there is a lot of discussion out there about the benefits music can have for writing. I have never really practiced it - though I have had a few songs make me think about a specific character. Still, I think it is a thing.

See, music has a power. It talks to us. It tells us about emotions and makes us feel things. Having the right playlist can keep your head in a certain frame of mind while you're working. The question then is, how do you create that playlist? Do you go by themes? Once you have themes how do you find the music? What about new things that come up?

It's something I want to try but I'm also totally lost on it. Anyone have advice?

I Must Be Writing...

Just a quick update. The Urban Fantasy story is going well. I have a brief outline (trying the important story points type outlining this time) and I've started writing. While some scenes have been harder than others, ultimately it's coming out ok, but I'm only about 7-8k in so far (hoping to have doubled that by Monday.)

The fun part though is that now that I'm  in the midst of writing something it seems I can't go five feet without getting a world idea or story idea popping into my head. I've been handling these by rewarding myself for hitting a milestone word count (usually every 1k or so since I'm writing around a full time job) by allowing myself to work on them a bit. So far I've gotten more ideas for a Space Opera/heist type story, a giant robot story, a victorian era fantasy pirate story, and several ideas I've shelved before are popping back into head with solutions to the problems that made me stop writing them.

It's fun, but also kind of frustrating when trying to work on one story. Still, I'd rather have the ideas coming in then feel completely brain dead.

Update On My Year - And Planning a Murder

It's been about a month since I posted here last, and that was just a quick mini-review of the new Tomb Raider game (I can't believe that was already a month ago!) Time is definitely marching forward. Worse yet, it is marching forward despite me and well, kind of leaving me behind when it comes to a bunch of the stuff I wanted to do this year.

So far I have no completed manuscripts for this year. I should, with the goal of having 4 done this year, be done 1 and starting number 2 by this point. I've started a few stories but nothing I've stuck to. Work and life have been doing a fine job of getting in the way. Still, all is not lost. while early attempts have failed I do have 2 stories I rather like, and am honestly excited about, all but done plotting. I'm hoping to begin writing one of them by Friday (maybe Monday, well see) and going with that. Once I get going I know it is just a matter of momentum and continuing forward. With the right word count (say about 2.5k a day) I can be done one story in early June, a second story in mid august, and a third story by October leaving the month of November as the crazy sprint that is NaNoWriMo for a fourth and final. That is with days off and other fun things since every 4 days of writing would give a day off with a 45 day plan on a draft.

That said, all is not lost on the world. I gave my story from last year a thorough going over, and it is currently in the hands of Alpha readers. Initial feedback received has been good and I have some areas to work on that I flagged myself. Hopefully I'll hear more about that soon and can get another draft or two done in the near future. Then I get to start the fun process of querying agents...won't that be fun.

As for current projects. The current (planned to start soon) WIP is an Urban Fantasy with a police main character. The fun part about this so far has been planning out the murders and in doing so also thinking about how the characters will react around those murders. I think it will lead to a fun story. Hopefully it'll be one of those that kind of just picks you up and goes with it. Also, at least for the first draft, the plan is to have it be in the first person. Hopefully that will work well.

Beyond that, I'm still going to the archery range (though not as much lately. need to fix that) and otherwise things are going well. I just need to carve more time out for the things I want to do long term and stop letting the short term defeat me.

Tomb Raider - Mini Review

Last night, while fighting off the last dredges of a stomach bug, I sat down and played through the last half of the new Tomb Raider game. Officially this means that I played the game in 2 sit downs. The first one was ended, forcefully, on me by everyone needing to go to bed as we had work the next day otherwise I likely wouldn't have stopped playing until I hit the end.

Crazy Weekend...and Other Stuff

I'm going to apologize in advance. This is going to be more like a livejournal entry than a blog post.

Simply put this week has been bizarre. On Wednesday I drove in to Boston to pick up my folks from the airport and bring them home. My mother ended up getting dropped off at the local hospital ER because she was suffering from abdominal pain. She wasn't there for long, just an hour or two, and they sent her home. All was well, I went back home, went to work Thursday and Friday and figured everything was ok. Saturday morning I woke up to a text message from my sister though: both parents were in the ER having been unable to keep any food down since Thursday.

The weekend went about as you can expect from there. At present my dad is fine. His potassium crashed, they got it back up, and he came home yesterday. As I write this he is sitting in the living room listening to internet radio and dozing off. My mother, at present, is still in the hospital. Her potassium also crashed but to a more severe level. They needed to keep her on an IV over night. The hope is she'll be able to come home today but that is dependent on her keeping food down. Hopefully it will go well.

Beyond this zaniness though things are still good. I've been writing and editing again lately. Enough that it actually seems like I have a habit forming of getting about 1-2k written after work before helping with making dinner. The editing happens a bit more haphazardly, but I got through about 70 of 350 pages last week, so as a kind of side thing its not going bad. Even better though is that the story I'm editing doesn't seem to suck. Sure there are parts that I don't know wtf I was doing. Other parts need to be fixed up and re-written, but by and large it seems like a good and entertaining story.

Hopefully this trend will cotninue.

How about you? How'd your weekend go?

My Year So Far

2013 so far has been a very interesting year for me. I came into the year with a lot of hopes. I was going to try to really crack down on my writing, and I was also going to try to get certain aspects of my life turned around. It hasn't all been going as planned, but at the same time - even as I am currently in the midst of recovering from being sicker than I've ever been - I think that so far the year has shown a lot of promise. So what's happened?