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Good morning, Jenstrying  , and I hope it finds you well. Zen offers some worthy advice that looks to have merit. As someone who began writing before anyone had a personal computer, I'd like to offer an alternative. I learned the skill with pen-and-paper and the typewriter, where every mistake was set in stone for all to see, and faced quite a transition when the computer came into my life. I'm still not completely comfortable leaving the pen out of the equation, so my solution was to make the pen the leading element of a process.First, it helps that I'm a plotter, meaning that I plan what I'm going to write as opposed to just starting a story and letting it roam. I set up my 'grid' in a notebook: I mostly write novellas, so I'm aiming for 20 scenes. If I'm trying for a novel, then 80-100 scenes depending on the number of characters. At 1000 words per scene, that gives me the length, then I know the protagonist gets about 60% of the scenes, the antagonist 20%, and the supporting characters divide the rest. With that done, I pick up my magical pen (think of the feather the mouse gave Dumbo to hold so he could fly), and write a sentence or two in each block to describe that scene, something like: Patience finds Monroe falling-down drunk in a cheap dive. She tries to tell him about Sanderson's offer, but he runs her off. Many times that will be all you need, but if there are specific points you want to make in that scene, then flesh it out to a paragraph. Once you finish listing all the scenes using this process, you will have the plotline of your book, whatever the length, written in longhand, and just as importantly, you will have made the connection to the quiet time with a pen putting your thoughts on paper without having to invest months writing out a full manuscript in longhand. Now when you take that notebook to the computer, you can simply expand your notes into the book or story that you've already written on the wonderful machine where any typing error can be corrected with a couple of keystrokes. Voila, the best of both worlds! At least it is for me . . . I hope you find your own solution, and maybe one of these suggestions will point you toward it. The very best of luck to you! |
Re: Re: Feeling Lost · 03-21-19 10:42am  Log in to Leave Feedback |
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