The problem I always have when beginning large creative writing projects such as novels is my lack of ability to plan ahead.
Usually, and in pretty much everything, I'm an amazingly organised person -- I used to use
Scrivener to organise my course and novel notes simply out of the sheer joy of being able to make folders within folders within folders and still being able to see all their contents at the same time (a remarkably rare feature, actually). I get agitated when I don't get to catalog and list all my tasks for the week or my possessions, because that means making on-the-fly decisions, and what if I forget something important?
It's amazing how all of that changes when it comes to creative writing. As a writer, (and as some longer-time followers of any of my previous blogs may have duly noted) I've always been the type of person who sits down in front of a blank page and starts writing. Using that approach, the story usually almost writes itself -- every moment of writing is a moment of joyful revelation and sometimes genuine surprise about the direction the story is taking. I believe it's a method of unrestrained creation that produces the best, most genuine characters, who act naturally to their personalities, because you don't strictly speaking have a storyline to restrict them.
The problem with that approach, however, is that it's largely unsustainable. When it comes to large projects, like the stalling novel I mentioned in my last post, Following the Gay Umbrella, which has since the NaNo of 2009 went clearly past 200,000 words, you simply struggle to keep all of that in your head. With FTGU, I built outlines and character profiles and such, because I knew it would be extremely difficult to create a sustainable story like that on the fly -- and I'm not saying it's impossible and that people haven't done it, I'm just saying that it would probably be very difficult.
Since then, and during that writing process, I've discovered that there's actually far more to a novel than the Beginning, Middle and End. You can have those things plotted out all you want, but if you keep to that, there will be things you haven't accounted for, things your characters develop to do that you haven't planned, and foreshadowing and things like that that lead to the inevitable end of your novel that are incredibly difficult to keep track of, even with as detailed an outline as I had for FTGU. That is one of the reasons that project is currently hibernating -- I lost the strings of that novel, and with current time restrictions, it's just not worth going back to it to try to learn all of it again.
This time, then, I'm trying a slightly more structured and yet, free approach. I'm going to try the
Snowflake method, which consists of 10 different steps, each going slightly more into detail with your novel. I confess that I haven't even read through the entire method yet, but I also confess that that's actually a pretty reasonable precaution when you know me -- if I DID know what the other steps entailed, I'd be far more tempted to simply skip the ones I find boring and get to the interesting bits. Still, there were two things that drew me to this method.
Firstly, I finally confessed to myself that though I like to think of myself as a reasonable storyteller and that I'm at least a moderately good writer in a technical sense, I haven't planned many stories in the past. My style of writing is more extempore: I simply sit down and a story pours itself out. I have also confessed to myself that while that might be a usable approach for most short stories (and maybe unsuccessful novels), if I want to write a longer story, I will have to resort to some sort of clear and concise planning technique that I seem not to be able to orchestrate myself.
Secondly, the Snowflake method drew me in with its simplicity, and the fact that it begins with the very core of the story. Step 1 of the method requires you to summarise your story in one sentence, in which case you're crystallising your idea into the very heart of what you want to express with your story. And that, coincidentally, has always been how I've had the best ideas for stories. They always begin with a single sentence, or, in the case of FTGU, a single expression (the title, in case you're wondering).
I haven't gotten far yet, using this technique, since I only discovered it four-ish days ago and university life is demanding. I'm currently drafting the paragraph for step 2. Still, here's to hoping that I don't get too busy and strike out on this, because it feels good and right, and I might actually be able to complete a novel this time.
Seriously though, keep your fingers crossed for me.
