Fuzzy Thoughts

Current Mood: Hot

Because the Bond movie was so unerring BAD, that it even beats out Roger Moore’s worst days as the jet setting spy player.

How bad was it? Think Episode 2…now very carefully insert a writer’s strike in there.

Yes, that bad.

They rewrote Casino Royale characters, they butchered the plot (plot should NEVER happen off screen), they didn’t do any research and EVERYONE was evil…making you hate everyone.

With some hope they can fix this. The writer of QS was the same writer as CR…but the directors and producers wouldn’t wait for the strike to be over. So what you get is a very large pile of dogshit. Only you can’t tell it’s dogshit because someone went in there and played with it until it looked like ravioli.

So that pretty much ruined our Friday.

Saturday was the day of J.’s sprouting full form into a crotchety old man. Or so he says. We had a great dinner at La Central. I spent the day nanoing…all very good. M.’s laptop is dying in a horrific way. Hopefully she’ll get that sorted out.

Sunday was more of the same….I realize I haven’t been updating my word count on the website…need to do that…I’m past 30,000 words.

Other than that I’m populating the Genghis website with all kinds of goodies (re: games) for February.

Current Mood: Exhasted

Yah! My Ravelry invite came today.

Knitty goodness!

Current Mood: Creative

So I have this thing in my story that gives one of main characters immortality.

It’s important and it goes away.

That’s not them problem. I finally embedded it in his skin. Made it so no one can see it….oh never mind…free will duh.

Carry on.

Current Mood: Sad

My BF forgot my birthday.

I know he forgot my birthday because I receive an email about how he’s setup a family hockey night for that day with his friends. And he’s checking that my daughter’s going too.

But.

So I sent an email that just said, “um…birthday”, because I’m too upset to write anything else. I shouldn’t be that upset, right? Except it’s my birthday. The same birthday that I’ve never had a birthday party for, much less acknowledgment for except from my dad and my current boyfriend and the folks at City Market when I turned 18.

So yeah, I’m bitter. I figure it’s better not tell folks when my birthday is. That way I don’t have to expect them to remember it. Luckily he responded to my email.

No, my birthday is the previous week. Oh, yours… well we can do hockey for your birthday. No, don’t shoot me. I’ll find a different day for hockey.

Sigh.

Current Mood: Creative

I’m an outliner. I outline my gaming modules, my short stories, and my novels. I outline articles, and essays. I outline.

I discovered my need to outline during my first NaNoWriMo when my characters got lost because I didn’t have a map. Needless to say I stopped writing to world build and outline.

I use the first 14 days of the First Draft in 30 Days method, I use the worksheets from Book in 30 and the scene method from Writer’s Little Helper (also in the same author’s novel writing kit).

For those of you that think that outlining takes away your creativity or your options, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. I’m sorry you are. Most think of outlines in terms of the torture we went through in school. Whether you are a product of the five paragraph essay from High School or went through the dreaded write to be ridiculed college method, most of us don’t have fond memories of outlines.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Step One: Characters
Spend some time writing out some characters. As many as you think you need with as many details as you want. Or as little. Remember this isn’t an end all be all list. In fact many characters that you won’t even realize exist right now will demand their corner of your universe. Some might take over. Remember even your main character is vulnerable to death. This is an open file that you fill in more later. Just get what you know will be in your story down now.

Step Two: Basic Plot
Write out the basic plot line. I use the sheet in FDi30D. Basically write out what they are doing, why and where. This is rarely a sheet long.

Step Two: Location.
Next write each location in your story down in order of location. So I write New York at the top of the sheet and write a rough overview that happens there. This can be as minute as you want. It can be streets in a down, businesses or even just times if they all stay in one place. This gives an idea of where the characters are when and in what chapters.

Step Three: Scenes
Write a few sentences for the ten most important scenes in your story. Make sure you do so for each scene. Now if you need to expand that. Write a general one sentence to a paragraph for each scene. Because I use ywriter I put these notes in each scene section. If you realize that more needs to happen in more chapters, adjust your location list as you do this.

Step Four: Motivations.
I do this sometimes following the worksheet in FDi30D. Basically you chart your scenes by beginning middle and end and write out basic motivations for what’s happening. It’s useful for getting to know the characters, but I never look at the file again even if I do write it.

Step Five: Write!
As you write you may realize you need another scene, just adjust your location and scene lists as need. Same goes when you add characters. Because I have the scene list I’ll skip around writing the scenes in one POV at the same time then going back and writing in the other POV.

Outlines are fluid things. They can be adjusted and changed. In the end you’ll know where you’ve been and will be able to keep your story consistent.

Current Mood: Blah

I know I’m nearly a year behind on trip photos. I have them all separated out.

Here’s Black Dragon Canyon in Utah. We were there last month and stopped on our way to Vegas.

I will clean off the rest of the photos…even the Dominican ones.