I’m almost at the end of the beginning. The beginning is the planning of my NaNoWriMo YA novel, Emma Delaney and I’m working through the ten steps in the Snowflake Method in October so I’m ready to let sparks fly off my fingers come November. (Actually, there’s really only nine steps as Step 10 is write the thing.) And I’m almost at the end. Tonight I managed to finish off Step 8.
Step 8 in the process involves breaking down my four-page plot synopsis (from Step 6) into individual scenes and entering them into a spreadsheet. It’s pretty basic at this stage but charts the course of the storyline through the book. I’ve written a couple of hundred words about each scene and have tried to get the important stuff down. (The peripheral stuff can wait until I actually start writing – that’s where the fun really starts.) I’ve broken my story down into 33 scenes, which is actually quite fortuitous because essentially that means I need to write a scene a day, of approximately 1500 words, every day through November, with a couple of extra scenes thrown in on the weekends. How easy is that? And I can see the story arc and where the tension is going to build. It’s great to have that so tangible at this point in time.
The process sounds cold and scientific and very removed from the creative art of writing, but I find I am at my most creative when I’m working within a framework. When I know where the edges are I’m free to do wonderful things within the boundaries. Give me pages of white space and I start to freak out. Tonight is a case in point.
In Emma Delaney, the trees reveal their secrets to Emma and put her in an awkward position: do nothing and allow people to exist in their suffering or say something and attempt to help. Emma hates being involved in other people’s lives but her commitment to social justice outweighs her discomfort. She decides she has no choice but to act. This occurs three times in the novel, each time moving closer and closer to what Emma holds most dear. While writing down my list of scenes, it suddenly struck me that I could do something different. The book is going to be written in first person from Emma’s point of view, but what if these three scenes - the truth-telling moments - are written in detached, third person? I don’t know if it’s going to work or not but I figure it’s worth a try.
Oh the joys of NaNoWriMo! How many days until November?
1 response so far ↓
Bill // October 8, 2009 at 3:30 am
You have a lot more planning done than I do!
It would be interesting to have those three scenes from a different pov. I say do it because of it doesn’t work out you could always re write those scenes later.