plotting -

26Oct 2014 by Dianna L. Gunn

The Ultimate Plot Creation Resource List

Nanowrimo

Once you've figured out the basics of your world and gotten to know your characters pretty well, it's time to start thinking seriously about the plot. If your novel planning process is moving along at the proper pace, you should already have an idea what your plot looks like. Now it's time to figure out all the details. Well, not all the details. At least a few details should be figured out as you go along, because the best stories grow organically. But you do need to know the basic structure of your plot before you start writing the first draft of your novel, at least if you want to write a first draft you might actually be able to salvage someday. So I've compiled a pretty large collection of…

05Oct 2012 by diannagunn

Bringing your Ideas Together

Nanowrimo, Workshops, Writing, Writing

Earlier this week we went over a few ways to find ideas for your Nanowrimo novel. With any luck you successfully used one of the brainstorming techniques I mentioned on Monday and came up with a few ideas or managed to flesh out an idea you already had. Today I'd like to help you organize those ideas. While having a mind map or a right brain left brain list is great and either can be used as a basic guide, a linear list of ideas--or a few lists consisting of different categories of ideas--is sometimes more helpful. Personally, my mind maps tend to be horribly disorganized and messy, so I myself will be doing this exercise as soon as I finish writing this post. First, you need to find a…

03Oct 2012 by diannagunn

Plotting in Three Parts

Guest Post, Nanowrimo, Novels, Writing, Writing: The Process

Today I'd like to introduce Anne Marie, author of La Dame a La Licorne, brought to you by Musa Publishing. This will be her ninth year participating in Nanowrimo. Lucky for those of you scrambling for ideas and trying to figure out how you're going to outline a novel before November first, Anne's got some ideas of her own about outlining which I hope you'll enjoy. For the past eight years I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month (aka: NaNoWriMo or NaNo). Every year I’ve tried a different approach to writing. I wanted to prove to myself that there isn’t one way to tell a story, and the methods outside my comfort zone might actually work better. Besides, what’s comfortable about writing 50,000 words in one month? Answer: everything when…

08Apr 2011 by diannagunn

5 Questions to Ask Yourself When Starting a Project

Novels, Workshops, Writing, Writing

This is the beginning of a series of posts about plotting and outlining. During this series of posts we will look at various aspects of plot and story, and then we'll talk about different types of outlines. The goal is that this series of posts will help you plan out your next novel-length project. Since we are at the very beginning, today I would like to talk about that beginning. These are some of the important things you have to consider when you're going from a basic idea to a planned story. 1. Why do I want to write this story? There are many different reasons why we choose to write the stories that we do. They range from being as simple as the story needs to get out to…