The Colorless Dragon Thread (Page 7 of 15)

You're on my list, probably tomorrow.  I need to mull your chapter a bit.

Followup on the review, on the part about bears and wolves not thinking or feeling.  There's a good case that their minds are almost entirely desire and feeling.  That many of them can read our feelings, and we can read theirs, argues for it.  Oh, and the dynamics of a wolf pack are rather like the dynamics of a gang.

Quite apart from from that, CSLewis does a convincing job of showing the reader the mind of a bear in =That Hideous Strength= (after Mr. Bultitude has been drugged and imprisoned).

If we want to get all technical about that line, then a wolf or bear's feelings and thoughts probably aren't the same as a human's. I see your point, though.

-Elisheva

Elisheva, there is a place in Indiana called Wolf Park. The center maintains a pack of wolves in a group and give them limited free range rather than a kennel. The center does a lot of teaching about body language and survival within a pack hierarchy. If you visit and sponsor one of the animals, you can interact with your animal however the critter wants to interact. I'll bet they have videos on their website. Neat place.

It would put a wolves mentality in perspective.

I was making fairly good progress in writing, but then I had a fantastic idea regarding plot and now I've been pulling my hair for two days trying to sort out the pieces. My notebook is slowly filling up with random notes...

Out of curiosity, how does everyone else outline their work? So far, I haven't been able to find any sort of outline process that works for me, the biggest problem being that I am practically incapable of summarizing. I don't even outline my chapters before I write them.

-Elisheva

I started by writing random moments. Dramatic character interactions that kept replaying in my mind. Once I wrote them down, I was able to move on and wipe the slate. Then I would write the 'in between' moments, but found I would lose steam and then move to a different 'in between'.

I went back and reread, kind of wallowing in old material (reliving it I think)

By the time I found this site, I had a formed plan but three books segmented into chunks.

The website convinced me to write linearly based on a timeline. I separated Anver from Kha's story. Once I wrote in a timeline, I was able to finish the first draft from Acts. Mandates is about five chapters from ending (stalled because I needed to figure out the magic first). Dictates will finish within 10 chapters.

Once I have drafts, I intend to graph out the plot and reorder/fill in the missing pieces. (Ex: my villains don't have much presence until battles. I don't like writing about evil, so this part is neglected in my work so far).

I've started by writing summaries of each chapter. It simplifies the action into something I can wrap my head around.

I'm not like NJC. He is a linear thinker. It's why he likes math. I'm more of a patterner. I think in circles and pull things into my awareness because I see a relation to my train of thought. So I have a plan and a destination that gets 'patterned' in between.

At work, I am surrounded by linear thinkers. That mindset is everywhere in medicine. I've learned to think in lines as a survival mechanism.

For me, that means to write what is in your head. The pieces will fall into place later.

Math is about patterns. Patterns are the only thing that all its branches and twigs have in common: grade school arithmetic and theory of computation, set theory and Euclidean Geometry, calculus and number theory, Cantor transfinites and game theory.

Oh, and I have used sticky notes and will surely do so again, on ledger paper folded to extend nortebook pages.

Put the Post-Its on the dragon.  Just make sure it stands still.

I'll play it safe and use the wall for my notes.

I plan like a mofo. (Except Kim's story, where I just wrote and wrote and ended when she died. Even in her story, I had a rough outline because it occurs (on top of / simultaneously with)  other stories. That is, I knew before writing which major events were going to occur... I just didn't know yet how she would respond to them.)

My outlining strategies will be pretty useless to you since I try to make one character dominant and everyone else side-show. My result is that usually one character carries the canvas and everyone else gets to reach in and paint their own strokes.

All disclaimers aside, I start with the simplest possible description. ONE verb if possible. Never more than three verbs. I expand outwards from there in 3's. So column (B) in the spreadsheet = the major arcs and column (C) represents the sub arcs.

For example, in a recent story "Woman learns too late the wages of sin" I have 3 arcs:
1. Evil at the start
2. Change of heart
3. Retribution

Each of these arcs turns into 3 arcs which turn into 3 arcs each and so forth until I can't break it down any further.

Here: 3 nodes deep:

No big shocker, I picked three sins. Avarice, Mendacity, and Passion (Anger). Original intent was to go through each (in the style of Dickens 3 ghosts), but that didn't pan out , and all those nodes got culled.

The middle "Change of heart" story arc, explored one node deeper:

Anything that breaks the rule of 3's gets pruned until it does. If it can't be reduced, I sit down and ask myself some hard questions about the story. Is the story trying to accomplish too much? Is it too complex? What story am I trying to tell?

Right now, my scientist character (Marsha) faces those questions. She's the 4th strand in many nodes. Should she get her own (more structurally sound) story? Is she helping the current story or is she hindering it? I seesaw on this every day. She passes the relevancy test, but not the rules of 3. Difficult choice!

Btw, beyond the 3rd tier of branches, I rarely stick to my outline. Characters surprise me and make weird decisions. Sometimes reviewers go "hey, J can't kill her sister in cold blood. It's repulsive. I hope you can change it" and I'm looking at my sheets and it's like level M down the chain and not crucial to A, B, or C so ya, outline can go fly a kite.

Coming back to yours... if you decide to approach such a strategy, I recommend you lay out all your bullet points. Make a giant shopping list of all you'd like to happen. Then go through and split into two columns (A) cause and (B) effect. Some items will be sitting in "effect" with no apparent "cause". That's normal. Then, go through your causes and see if you can link them to a new column which is the greater causes. At this point, some of your orphaned effects will now join up. After several passes, you may be 3-4 nodes deep, but everything will join up. Anything that doesn't join up needs close scrutiny.

Your stories have a style very different from Elisheva's, or Amy's--or mine.

Not everything in someone's life is relevant to that life's greater meaning, or to any one story about the person.  You can, for instance, write good accounts and analyses of U.S.Grant's life without ever noting that his one ambition in life--never achieved--was to teach mathematics.  Yet the man as a whole is incomplete without that.  (Before The War Between the States, Harvard and Yale turned to West Point grads for their math faculties.)