What do you all do for plotting? I've heard a popular strategy in NaNoWriMo is making outlines and writing from them, and Novelist's Boot Camp requires very extensive outlining.
I really can't handle it, to the point I'm not sure if I can go with the NBC strategy. I have problems outlining essays—anything for which I have to outline ends up choppy with extremely questionable/terrible transitions. I may not hit absolutely everything without an outline, but at least I feel like it flows. That's just for nonfiction, too—something that draws only from my own inspiration is going to feel much worse than usual if I try to make it fit something.
On the other hand, I can't just decide to write a chapter (*cough* first chapter of Break Out *cough*) and write it. I need to have some prior plan in my head, and I have plotted "outlines" of entire chapters like this. Actually, I think it's more like making a movie of it, though I do end up with a few loose phrases I want to incorporate (a lot of which I actually don't, incidentally...).
I'm not sure exactly how much organization I'm trying to get—or how much I need to get. It's an art, I guess. Until then, pantsing it is.
Hmmm ... not really sure I can help you here, because I'm one of those people who *needs* everything to be planned out well in advance before I write it. Unstained, for example - I have the entire Games plotted out, day by day, in detail, and I have for several years. It's just the writing it that's the hard part. You seem to be exactly the opposite - you don't like outlining, but you have the ability to write a chapter easily and have it flow without much prior planning.
ReplyDeleteI think a story like Break Out will require some planning, though, but since I have no idea what's going to happen in it (The Rules or a Hunger Games story is easier to guess at because they have a very structured plot set up) I don't think I can help you, either. Maybe start with deciding who's going to die and in which chapter, and then start setting up events leading to that? *Clueless*
See, I was able to do that in the last few chapters of The Rules. Now I know who dies, but there's so much more to the story than plain hunting and killing now that it's hard to see what happens.
DeleteI'm also concerned that the 2YN course has several weeks allotted to outlining... Hopefully it doesn't kill the plot.