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Blog series about strategies for getting your book done



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Tue Sep 26, 2017 4:47 am
BookplanPro says...



Hi everyone,

I've started writing a series of articles designed to help authors get their books done - as opposed to getting a few chapters in and then giving up because that's what I used to do :P


Image
The Spark Of Inspiration - How to plan to keep your book alive until it's done

Other topics I'm working on are strategies to plan effectively - that is, without taking away all the fun of spontaneous ideas later on, and different ways to visualise your story to keep it interesting. Those are going to be a bit more in-depth.

I'm fairly new to this so I would love love love some feedback if you have time.

thanks
Neil
I wrote a writing app! Bookplan Pro
  





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Tue Sep 26, 2017 3:44 pm
Kale says...



Hey there!

I checked out the blog post and the rest of the site, and while I don't have too much to say about the contents of the blog post, since you seem to be already aware that it's a bit on the light side of the how-to, I just wanted to say that the app looks very promising, especially for events like NaNoWriMo.

I haven't had a chance to play around with the app yet, and I'm not sure if it will work with my particular writing method, but I am curious to see what future blog posts cover since I'm one of those writers that doesn't plot things out as part of the planning stage, because anything more than the vaguest of ideas of such tends to kill my motivation for writing the story.
Secretly a Kyllorac, sometimes a Murtle.
There are no chickens in Hyrule.
Princessence: A LMS Project
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Thu Sep 28, 2017 10:29 pm
BookplanPro says...



Thank you so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it! I've now got "write more practical how-to" on a post-it stuck on my screen :)

I'm one of those people who need to plan the life out of everything, but I do remember a time when I didn't. So I'm trying to trace back to where that changed. Sometimes I miss the spontaneity of just writing, there's something really freeing about it. Now I'm trying to figure out ways to make planning feel more fun and less of a chore because I do think it's a really important part. Every time I've stopped writing a book halfway through it's been because the story fell apart on me. Super frustrating... I guess I'm looking for a good balance between planning (to make sure the story works out) and leaving enough freedom to have fun (so it doesn't kill motivation).
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Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:23 am
Kale says...



Planning is plenty of fun, and I do quite a bit of planning. Just not planning of the plot. Building up the settings, the characters, the motives and histories, and all of that makes the actual writing a lot easier for sure, but for some reason, knowing the sequence of events in detail plot-wise just kills any motivation I may have had to write the story because it's like I've already written out the story, so why write it again with all that additional hard work characterization and description.

Then again, I find it a lot easier to revise and refine than to write and expand, so that may be a factor. XD
Secretly a Kyllorac, sometimes a Murtle.
There are no chickens in Hyrule.
Princessence: A LMS Project
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Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:56 am
BookplanPro says...



Oh yea that makes total sense! I do like the idea of having a bunch of interesting characters and settings and just letting them all act in ways that make sense given the setup. In a way it's like reading the book while you're writing it, you discover it as you go along :)
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Sat Sep 30, 2017 2:01 pm
Kale says...



Exactly!
Secretly a Kyllorac, sometimes a Murtle.
There are no chickens in Hyrule.
Princessence: A LMS Project
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Tue Oct 03, 2017 11:41 am
BookplanPro says...



I took a little detour into art territory with my latest post, tell me what you guys think. Don't worry, it's still about writing :)

Image
A Painter's Eye - Contrast in storytelling
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Tue Oct 03, 2017 3:01 pm
Holysocks says...



I do the sane as Kyll- write as I go. I generally don't know what's going to happen in my stories until it happens! Well it depends on the work- sometimes I have a strong idea or image of what I want to happen. But normally that's just for short stories, novels are all over the place for me, but it's okay.

As for your blog! I haven't looked at it yet, but I'm hoping to sometime.
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Wed Oct 04, 2017 12:57 pm
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Audy says...



These blog posts are great!! I've pretty much accepted that writing will always be a slog. I find setting time each day helps. The "each day" being the most important part of that equation.

I'm the inverse of Kyll? :P

I plan out ALL of the plot details. I'm in the sci-fi/fantasy/spec-fic realm, so most of my ideas and initial sparks start out as concepts anyway. The "What if" scenarios.


Spoiler! :

-what would a true anarchist-society utopia look like?
-what if we lived on a cubed earth? :3
-what would a Saturn-society look like?
-what if a god lived among us?
-what if you lived in a world of immortals and "death" was considered a transcendental state everybody aimed for?
-what if a fortune-teller machine decides everyone's futures?
-what if you take an ordinary/likable character and have them unknowingly trace the steps of power Hitler took?
-what if I combine lottery-scenario -- and make that lottery be the "revival" of a dead person?


Because they start out in this way, the "inspiration" is me realistically trying to answer the question and figure out how such a world would work. That gets my gears going and gets me really excited, so I can usually construct a: Here's how such a thing would look like -- This concept then seems to attract THESE premises/themes (Freedom vs Security (as opposed to good vs evil); The path of hell is paved with good intentions; Death is very much required for us to enjoy Living the Life). I'm a big nerd though, just someone who loves philosophy and turning philosophical questions. Tackling into them gets my brain turning-- it's the complete opposite for my friend, she kind of stumbles upon her themes without meaning to write about them at all, which I think is equally cool :O

Oftentimes, when I have a concept + premise, it is easy to kind of create a story beginning, middle, end out of that.


The fun/spontaneous and blank slate part for me are the characters. It feels a little bit like improv acting which each scene that I write! This works out well for me, but it has some flaws:

one-- keeping your characters fresh and real and not...pawns.
two-- to that same effect, I am hyper aware that the main character NEEDS agency and conflict brought about by steering their own oar towards that end (At least, I find this more interesting)-- and also a character has to have a life and desires BEFORE the plot-happens.

Often, what ends up happening is that a character does something that does not lead them down a Plot Point; and that's okay :) My PlotNoteCards are only happy to change (keeps things fresh).

I did something the other day where I went from having like 10 characters, to actually figuring out that my MC is more like a combination of 2 characters, and my villain/antagonist is more like a combination of 2 characters and THAT was fun and an equally horrid re-write - but super groundbreaking! xD
Spoiler! :

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Wed Oct 04, 2017 10:37 pm
Kale says...



I really liked the latest post. The art comparisons were spot-on and well-illustrated, and the examples you used for the sentence-level impacts were also excellent. I particularly liked how you tied them into the illustrations because that made them even more tangible, in a sense.

My one quibble would be that the post assumes a basic knowledge of story structure that a lot of writers actually lack (at least in my experience). You may want to consider linking to story writing 101 pieces to provide background for those readers, particularly with respect to basic story structures, and plot diagrams and how to read/use them.
Secretly a Kyllorac, sometimes a Murtle.
There are no chickens in Hyrule.
Princessence: A LMS Project
WRFF | KotGR
  








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