Writing: 40 Scenes

[seraphcelene]

I really want this novel thing to work out. I love writing and I have ideas for original pieces that I want to complete, but this is HARD! Okay, I know, it's supposed to be and, to be honest, the short pieces that I am most proud of are the ones that were a little more challenging to execute. STILL!

I've gotten further than I've ever gotten before on structuring a full-length piece. That is a good thing. I went through the 15 beats thing and I LOVED that exercise. I tried doing the fractal, but it feels like a lot of double work when combined with the beats, so maybe next time.

Currently, I'm working on creating the scene cards. I've estimated that I'll need at least 40 (probably closer to 50) scenes. It makes sense, but (again) the work! Ha!! I want to start writing already, but I understand that in the long run, creating the skeleton now will save me some time and angst later. Still ... itching to write. Not to mention there's a second novel idea creeping in at the edges of my brain. I'm trying to notate things and put it away until I get the Briar book completed. At least a first draft!

So, you're writing, where are you in the process? What are the biggest challenges thus far?

Comments

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

15 beats hunh whatnow?

[seraphcelene]

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting That You'll Ever Need is formulated around the idea that there are 15 essential components to any successful screenplay. Here's a link to the basic run-down. Although, it's not totally transferable to novel-writing, it did help me to think about my novel in a particular way. It helped me to open up the ideas of how the story needs to function and what elements should be included. My challenge as a habitual short-story writer is that I write encapsulated and excised portions of a larger narrative. Because I'm focusing on a singular moment, I get to ignore the before and after. Of course, writing a novel is similar but on a much larger scale. It's a bigger moment packed with a lot of little moments. Save the Cat helped me to flesh out the bigger moments.

So! Now I'm working on the smaller moments. The g-damn individual tiny moments that will add up to the totality of the narrative. It's a bitch. Ha! Right now I have 12 out of 40 scenes down. I'm haphazardly working through the larger points and then I'll drill down to the connecting scenes that will make logical sense and, of course, because the 15 beats don't totally translate, I'm working on adding in additional scenes. But they have to make sense to the story and they have to flow.

The OTHER book that I've been reading is John Dufresne's The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction and that's helping with nuancing the ideas that I already have. It's daunting and exciting and exhausting all at the same time.