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ellarienIt's been a while since I started a novel, if I don't count the one I've been making mostly-abortive runs at for the last few years. I've been trying to remember how I got started, and I think it was different each time, so it doesn't help too much.
The first time, I was 19, and I just launched into it without much idea of how long the thing was going to turn out, writing longhand in erasable ballpoint in cheap thick exercise books from the student union shop; there may have been a few character notes, but not much more than that.
The second time, I'd been playing with the characters for a while, and noodling the story; one day I sat down in an armchair by the French windows and wrote a couple of pages longhand on a pad, even though I'd been doing most of my writing directly on the computer for years. The heroine didn't entirely come alive for me until I did that, but those paragraphs didn't survive many rounds of revisions.
The third one, I planned out quite carefully, scribbling scene-ideas on index cards until I had enough to deal out into a plot. I still had no clue what the villain was actually up to until she infodumped the whole thing about three chapters from the end, and I could never face going back to revise the rest to integrate that.
And number four? Is intended to be more complex than any of them, with layers of history and backstory behind it. I have a stack of index cards scribbled over a number of years, and about a chapter and a half of actual writing, but I can't seem to make myself carry on with it without knowing at least roughly where all the various, past and present, plot threads go, and trying to outline in note form won't work; I've been writing down the ancient history in complete sentences, in what I think of as Appendix Voice, but that will only take me so far. It's fun, spinning a world out of nothing by the action of my fingers on the keyboard; next up, people, maybe next week.
In the meantime, I've been trying to recharge myself by taking in other people's stories; I've been reading a lot more, again, and this afternoon I watched the whole of the BBC adaptation of Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, which was a new Trollope for me and lots of familiar-looking British actors. (I kept half expecting the silly clergyman to nip off back to the Tardis.)
The first time, I was 19, and I just launched into it without much idea of how long the thing was going to turn out, writing longhand in erasable ballpoint in cheap thick exercise books from the student union shop; there may have been a few character notes, but not much more than that.
The second time, I'd been playing with the characters for a while, and noodling the story; one day I sat down in an armchair by the French windows and wrote a couple of pages longhand on a pad, even though I'd been doing most of my writing directly on the computer for years. The heroine didn't entirely come alive for me until I did that, but those paragraphs didn't survive many rounds of revisions.
The third one, I planned out quite carefully, scribbling scene-ideas on index cards until I had enough to deal out into a plot. I still had no clue what the villain was actually up to until she infodumped the whole thing about three chapters from the end, and I could never face going back to revise the rest to integrate that.
And number four? Is intended to be more complex than any of them, with layers of history and backstory behind it. I have a stack of index cards scribbled over a number of years, and about a chapter and a half of actual writing, but I can't seem to make myself carry on with it without knowing at least roughly where all the various, past and present, plot threads go, and trying to outline in note form won't work; I've been writing down the ancient history in complete sentences, in what I think of as Appendix Voice, but that will only take me so far. It's fun, spinning a world out of nothing by the action of my fingers on the keyboard; next up, people, maybe next week.
In the meantime, I've been trying to recharge myself by taking in other people's stories; I've been reading a lot more, again, and this afternoon I watched the whole of the BBC adaptation of Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, which was a new Trollope for me and lots of familiar-looking British actors. (I kept half expecting the silly clergyman to nip off back to the Tardis.)
