July 11, 2003
Outline, ho!
Or maybe that should be "outlining ho", cause that's what I've been today. I did a little bit of worldbuilding, nailing down some of the "rules" that my faeries have to cope with in their modern world setting. Then I touched up my summary a little bit, raising such valid questions as "If the faerie prince is living in an abandoned subway station, where the fuck does that put the city's fae underbelly?" The prince may end up moving up in the world, literally and figuratively.
Then I actually started doing the outline itself. I have never, EVER actually done a formal outline for any work of fiction except the Tribe 8 stuff, and only then because the editor required it. So far... it's incredibly liberating. I can just blue-sky plot ideas and copy and paste them around until they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I'd forgotten that I sort of like this part, even though I generally detest outlining. I guess you could say I'm drawing up my travel plans and road map. Always allowing, of course, for detours.
Is it bad that so far one of my brand new major characters is only referred to in my notes as "Resistance Boy"? I dunno. I know he needs a name eventually, but it's keeping me so amused...
Posted by Lisa at July 11, 2003 12:36 PMHey :-)
Good work with the outline. Odd that you should be doing that, given that I've just been working on finding my intuition.
I'm working with character development and archetypes -- lots of symbolic stuff that you're good at -- and I'm carrying that discussion on in Tina's message board. (Tina started Twilight Tales, won awards for her first novel, and has been teaching me stuff)
If I can entice you into adding another board to your list of places to contribute, here's where to go: http://www.tinajens.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Writers
I'll let you know how I do with this intuitive stuff. If I only had a good, detailed system for using it....
- emc
Posted by: Eric M. Cherry at July 11, 2003 02:45 PM