Plotting. Why do we do it? It’s hard, it takes forever, and it's not like our characters ever want to listen to us anyway. It doesn’t matter if there’s a giant, invisible sky dragon waiting for them three towns to the west, your characters are bound to head north, chasing a fairy-tale about a wish-granting pixie. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your characters stray from the path. The story you’re writing is never the one you set out to write, it’s the one you find along the way. All you need to know is where it starts and where it ends. Everything in between isn’t so much plot as it is character dynamics. Revenge. Love. Loyalty. Traitor. Lover. Brother. It’s no coincidence that the most common character motivations are all about character dynamics. Even if your character’s a loner, unless they have lived alone and away from human contact all their lives they should have been formed by their social environment. Rejection is as much a form of social interaction as inclusion. If a fantasy character wants to slay the dragon for glory, who are they trying to impress? If a contemporary character wishes they were more exciting, who’s telling them that they’re boring? A desire for change, negative or positive, needs a catalyst. Just like it isn’t realistic to have a villain who woke up one day and decided that being evil sounded like a good career choice, a hero can’t want to help everyone without a reason. Someone has to have raised them that way, or something must’ve happened that made them determined to save as many people as they could. What happens on the path between the beginning and the end depends entirely upon who’s walking down it. If the characters have only just met, you might need to establish trust quickly. If they’ve known each other forever, maybe they have to adjust to a new person joining the group, or a new dynamic forged between them by the situation. If you get bogged down in writer’s block, you could consider playing around with them. For example, what happens what the group mediator picks a fight? What’s pushed them to it, and who breaks it up? How does the group split after an argument? What do they do when the medic doesn’t have the necessary skills to deal with an injury? Characters aren’t just formed by the climax. Stories need multiple crises. If you end up with one that doesn’t add anything to the story and can’t be tailored to the plot, you can always cut it later. I hope this has been useful, especially with National Novel Writing Month around the corner. Remember, we’ve got a workshop with Alex Jackson, the writer of the Malkonar trilogy, coming up on Tuesday, as well as the usual writing session on Thursday. Hannah
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Hey everyone, How are you all? We’ve had a great start to the year so far. We’ve had our very first social of the year which started out at the Student’s Union. We played some ice breaker games to get to know each other and then went to Wetherspoons to have a lovely chat over some food. Thanks to everyone who came along to that and we hope that you all got a chance to talk to the committee and see just how friendly we really are
As well as that, we have our first writing workshop of the year tomorrow (Saturday 15th October) with our very own Editor on the committee, Sonja. She’s awesome and will be leading this workshop on a way to plan your next project called the Snowflake Method. Whether you’ve heard of it or not, this will be a fab chance to find out more and learn how to actually apply it to your own novel or screenplay, or anything with plot you happen to be working on.
We also have a new writing buddy system! This is a great opportunity to pair up with someone who shares your style of writing and make some new friends. We’re really excited about this opportunity to inspire and critique each other’s work so please join the Facebook group to find out more. And that’s just the beginning of all the things to come. We also have another workshop planned for the end of this month with published author Alex Jackson who we are very grateful to for agreeing to come along and speak with us as well as some coffee shop sessions that will take place this month on the last Saturday of October. So yeah, that’s all I’ve got for you at the moment but check out the CreSoc society on Facebook and Twitter as well as right here on the website to find out more about the exciting things coming up as well as to talk to us on the committee. We really hope you’re as excited as we are to see what else this year holds for the CreSoc society! Until next time, Happy Writing! Salma
There are two types of writers. Jotters and Plotters. Instinct and Intent. Steven King and JK Rowling. Explorers and Architects. You probably fit into one of these categories, maybe slightly, maybe religiously. Either way, in this blog post I’m going to cover some of the advantages of each, to try and help you choose the best tool for the story you want to tell.
Architects AKA, Outliners. These writers are the daydreamers. They’ll spend months, years, even decades refining and perfecting their story before they write a single word, with their story going through many changes before the perfect one is found. When pen finally does go to paper (or fingers to keys in this age), it will be total dictation, possibly with a scene/chapter breakdown on a spreadsheet beside them. To them, the writing process is not storytelling; it is telepathy, finding the right words to transfer the story from their own mind to that of the readers.
Explorers AKA, Discovery Writers. Instead of focusing on story, these writers focus on situations. Pre-work and planning is done on the characters and the world, fleshing them out and giving them depth. Then, armed with characters, a starting point, and a destination, they start writing. The story is crafted moment by moment, as the characters organically discover each situation they come across and react accordingly. Writing and storytelling go hand in hand; inspiration comes in the moment, and passes directly to the page.
So, there you have it. I myself am a complete architect, spreadsheets and everything; although, after researching and writing this post, I’m going to try to edge a little closer to the Explorer side of the spectrum. What type of writer are you? Explorer, Architect, or something else entirely? Do you think either is inherently better? Discuss in the forum and, until next time, keep writing. Devon |
Blog posts are written by our committee members, posted regularly! We talk about exciting new ventures, upcoming events and opportunities, as well as the odd writing thoughts and topics we think of!
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