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Dear Startled:
How much of your novel can you retype by memory?
/signed/
Uncle Jim
Is this just a sign I need to take a break for a bit, and try not to worry about it, or do you have some ideas to at least get my mind thinking back again? Also, do you have any advice for planning stuff out more and making sure it's a bit more well thought out?
Taking a break might help, provided that break has an end-point. Take a month off to watch movies, maybe.
As for organizing, what I do is write flow charts. From the flowchart I write an outline.
BUT (important thing here) be aware that if the novel deviates from the outline, it's okay to change the outline.
You may be in a vicious circle here: Being stuck makes you worry. Being worried makes you stuck. Don't worry; the ideas will come.
EDIT: Also I am terrible at making outlines. I usually end up deviating from them completely, thus making them useless, or "falling out of love" with the idea. Any idea how to work on that so, that way I can get a bit more help from outlines. Not necessarily strict ones but one that will help me whenever I do get stuck in my writing.
If outlining doesn't work from you, maybe try the flowcharting suggestion. It never occurred to me to even try until Uncle Jim said something. Now I have to do it just to see what I can make of it.
What's the difference between flowcharting and outlining? I thought they were the same thing.
Considering how I outline, they aren't the same thing. To me, flowcharting is a little more similar to mindmapping.
Great to see this post.I think that authors do that sort of stuff because otherwise they'd be wringing their hands.
As far as boosting their books' sales, wringing their hands would be just as effective and cost a lot less.
What they should be doing is writing their next book.
Where this sort of promotional activity might make a difference is when your expected sales are on the order of 100-200 copies (i.e. most self-published books). There, boosting your sales by another 100 copies is a 100% gain. (Note that as a self-published author you are the publisher and publicity and marketing is the publisher's job.)
If you're expecting to sell 10,000-20,000 copies, boosting your sales by another 100 is a 1% gain, and ... probably not the best use of your time and money.
Hi Silver,
I'm not Uncle Jim, but I'm going to thrown in my half a cent's worth. You can ignore it if you so choose.
Since you're familiar with the outline, I won't say anything about that. Out of curiosity I Googled Story Flowchart last night and came up with some interesting hits. Here's one flowchart that seemed to make the most sense.
If you're familiar with computer programming, it's the same sort of theory used there as a story flowchart.
Like I said, it's my half-a-cent's worth.
I use actual computer-programming flowchart symbols and such (dating back to my time programming in FORTRAN). Works for me.
The flowchart tells me if I have a complete story and shows how the parts interrelate.
From there I write a "strong outline" (roughly 3/4 the length of the finished work), with some dialog and some description sketched in. This is very rough and doesn't pause for research, so you'll find lots of stuff set off in brackets like [look this up] or[something happens here] and [does this make sense?].
Mind mapping is a great brainstorming tool as well.
Freemind is the software I use because I like the way it looks. Plain ol' pen and paper works just as well.
You can use it for decision trees. Character A does XYZ. After that, she needs to go do PDQ and ABC. Which to do first? You can play around with it visually and like with the flowchart where you come to decision points (do they go to Place B (and what's the result) or go to Place H (and what's the result) and which do you as the author like as a story flow. To see the flow visually graphed out can sometimes help.