I use these tecniques for my stories too...which are mostly straight historical fiction. Except for one contemporary piece- I based that on where I live now.
Graffiti is the most passionate form of literature there is.
It's El to everyone. Friend and foe alike. Not even I would wish copying and pasting Éloeré all the time on anyone, not even an enemy. Plus, I don't even know how to pronounce it, and I made the word up. So, it's El.
Well, I'm very glad to here of the existance of an official "Inside out" method, because it's the one I seem to use by instict, and i always hear about the "Outside In" method when people disscuss this sort of thing, and I start worrying I'm doing it WRONG. But the method exists! Yay!
Oh, you're angry! Click your pen.
--Music and Lyrics
Ah.... A fantasy world.
To make it short A fantasy world is not just required to help the writer with storylines but is usally because the writer has a lot of imagination bubbling up inside of him/her.
To write about a fantasy world the worst thing to do is start with Chapter 1 and punching those keys. The right thing to do is a have a long planning session. Until you can draw your own map, make a list of characters and their adventures, plus all their relatives. The world needs a time set and a temperature.
I shan't go on and on so All I'll say is to send a message to me for more information.
Sending messages wont takenearly as long as it sounds.
I disagree with Ryan.
I have three worlds on the go: One is our Earth (Hamstring), one is an "earth" with considerable paranormal differences (Sugnoma Lived) and one is a super cliche dragons and orcs type place (Blade of Everafter).
With aach of these stories (all large ones that I am working on as time goes by) I started at the beginning and carried on my way.
I find the best way to create a world, is read it, ask questions about your story, and make up answers. Also, get friends to read it, and when they as questions, make them up. Spontaneity can add extremely better stuff to a story.
A good example is in the story of Hamstring, someone asked me what I would name a pig wizard. I said Parump. And people liked it.
The same can go for when you are inventing races. Or the history of your world.
Get to it when you come to it I say. And a story never HAS to be finished, so if in the end you find there is not enough of soemthing.....you can simply add it in.
This is not to say I have never done any pre-writing planning.
~The bandit’s body slumped to the ground, knees hitting first,followed by the rest.His dead weight pushed dust into the air in a swirling cloud.The blood flowed from his head,splicing like river canals,delaying slightly on pebbles before flowing on through the street.~
Yes, you said it yourself, that you never do pre-planning or pre-writing.
I have done both. And planning a story ios by far the way to go as you will never get stuck and you can always change something and come up with better ideas before you put it in your book.
~The bandit’s body slumped to the ground, knees hitting first,followed by the rest.His dead weight pushed dust into the air in a swirling cloud.The blood flowed from his head,splicing like river canals,delaying slightly on pebbles before flowing on through the street.~
@ Ryan and Rincewind: I think creating a mythology/world is the writer's personal preference. So either way would be correct, depending how you work.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.
"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach
[quote="Snoink"]@ Ryan and Rincewind: I think creating a mythology/world is the writer's personal preference. So either way would be correct, depending how you work.[/quote]
I couldn't agree more.
Everybody has there own way of doing things. Who's to say which is the best. All I know is, we do what works for us.
~The bandit’s body slumped to the ground, knees hitting first,followed by the rest.His dead weight pushed dust into the air in a swirling cloud.The blood flowed from his head,splicing like river canals,delaying slightly on pebbles before flowing on through the street.~
I'm with Snoink on this one. I manage to defy.. er, mince throughly, most methods of writing I've ever heard of. I started with the inside out method, expanded to outside in, then scrapped what I had from inside out, and started over using the world I had from outside in. But it makes sense to me, and becuase of that, I really understand the version of the world I'm working with, and it has limitations, which i think helps any story, as it relates to this world.
Ryan, when I started writing, I pretty much started at what I thought was chapter one and went with it. since then i've revised, and omitted most of that work, but it has set the basis for what I'm currently working on. it may not be the way you would go with writing, but it works quite well for people.
***Under the Responsibility of S.P.E.W.*** (Sadistic Perplexion of Everyone's Wits)
Medieval Lit! Come here to find out who Chaucer plagiarized and translated - and why and how it worked in the late 1300s.
I have only recently been diligantly editing all my work, and my newest pieces (Hamstring) are all liek triple edited. I rip stuff out, patch things up, throw thigns in and try them out. I think being able to experiment and knowing well what your possiblities are is key to creating good "believeable" fiction.
~The bandit’s body slumped to the ground, knees hitting first,followed by the rest.His dead weight pushed dust into the air in a swirling cloud.The blood flowed from his head,splicing like river canals,delaying slightly on pebbles before flowing on through the street.~
As someone who has completed four short novels and a one-act play without any serious preplanning and almost never getting stuck, I can definitely support Rincewind on this. People have tried to teach me methods for years, and then never work for me. That could be chalked up to lack of discipline, but planning ahead never worked. In one of the novels I'm writing now, I was writing the first page of the first chapter with one thing in mind. Then half-way through page three, something I didn't expect suddenly entered the story. If I had gone with my original idea, it wouldn't have been half as interesting as it turned out to be. I did get stuck halfway through, but that wasn't for lack of preplanning. It was simply because what I was doing was not working, so I had to start again.
Please, sit down before you fall down.
Belloq, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
Then half-way through page three, something I didn't expect suddenly entered the story. If I had gone with my original idea, it wouldn't have been half as interesting as it turned out to be.
Even if you plan a story changes! Mine has morphed out of recognisable shape ...
With regards to the planning/non-planning disscuss between Rincewind and Ryan, you're BOTH right! (don't you hate it when someone says that?) I preach the holiness of planning, but I don't always do it myself. I have some of my best work (in my opinion) that started as "Chapter 1, The Rise of the Grill ...". I make up the Weasle Queen stuff in my blog off the top of my head as I go along, which is very fun. I don't even always know where the dialogue's going, and they're talking about personality splits and sharing thoughts and all kinds of complicated things that I ought to have some idea about where it's going, but don't. Works out fine usually.
On the other hand, there's my "story". The one that merits the title "my story". Everything else goes by it's title when I'm talking about it, but this is The One. If that makes sense. For this story, I planned and planned and planned and planned. If I didn't plan, I don't know where it would end up. Probably the Land of Bad Writing. It may even implode. The point is, that story NEEDS planning. It wouldn't work without it. But the Weasle Queen stuff and Magic For Dummies and that sort of thing would choke and die on over-planning (some is OK).
So you're BOTH right!!!
Oh, you're angry! Click your pen.
--Music and Lyrics
It is indeed a combination of both. If you think about it , it's impossible not to do any pre-planning. Everything is planned in your hear more or less befor eyou type it out or write it out. But then there are those things that have to be written to be planned about.
Some of the best authors in the world openly admit that often their books very well write themselves.
Its nothing to be ashamed of to sit down and let 'er rip!
~The bandit’s body slumped to the ground, knees hitting first,followed by the rest.His dead weight pushed dust into the air in a swirling cloud.The blood flowed from his head,splicing like river canals,delaying slightly on pebbles before flowing on through the street.~
Oh yeah. My books certainly write themselves. With A Different Kind of Goblin, I know what I want to include, and have particular scenes in mind. But if you as me how it will all look in the end, or how many times Rachel will turn into an elf, I couldn't tell you.
Sometimes things fall right into place without you ever meaning them to. In Wishes, there were about four chapters straight of my characters doing little more than walking, and it was getting kind of tedious. Their ultimate goal was to reach the castle on the top of the mountain, but first they had to work their way through the mountain tunnels. I couldn't think of how they would get into the mountain without getting really boring, so when they stopped at the river to get a drink, I had one of them get bitten by a venomous water snake and have her unconscious until they were taken into the mountain village. In doing that, I was able to do some subtle foreshadowing and add to the drama of the climax. None of it was planned until I got to page 103, where I thought I needed to pick up the pace, and the book is only 170 pages long.
Please, sit down before you fall down.
Belloq, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
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