posted
I realise that, up till now at least, I've not been big on the planning side of writing. I just start and see where I go. But I've never gone into a corner before. I'll try to explain without boring you silly. Basically, I'm writing a sort of fantasy story, with a large band of bandits prancing around the countryside, setting fire to and looting villages. Their leader bears a striking resemblance to an old legend concerning a Soulless One. Fine and dandy so far, but I've started giving this Soulless One superpowers. Well, saying that she can be killed by no living being, with strength, guile, and skill beyond any known levels. Unfortunately, I can't explain this away with magic, because there is no magic in this universe. Does anyone have any ideas of the bacon-saving variety? Makes you think planning is better than it sounds, doesn't it? JK
Posts: 503 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Make-up something about this bandits past. Maybe at the age of two he/she started training with the best in the world and then killed them all or something when he/she was ten and therefore there's nobody 'better' then him. I don't know...
Posts: 56 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
These are garden variety generic ideas to get you around your little problem...
1. "One True Magic" system - There is no magic per se in the world, except one single power that has been hidden away for ages. Prehaps it comes from another world or dimension, so no one knows about it.. except of course the villian who's discovered it's evil side and the hero who must uncover the secert and use it's powers to defeat the villan. In sci-fi, we call it a superweapon.
2. "Rare Magic" Magic can exist but it's existant is suppressed by authority and hidden by it's practitioners. Think of Europe in the middle ages: The Church puts out propaganda about witchcraft all the while denying it's power. Of course, all true witches must pratice their arts in secret, all the while the populace is very supersititous, but they have never SEEN anything magical... This is highly realistic, and not often done, or done well, in fantasy.
3. "The Sci Fi Bend" Magic? There's no such thing but... This creature is an alien from another world or maybe a human from a futurist setting (Hey.. when I said garden variety, I MEAN IT!)
As far as actual planning... I think planning is important, and every author should have a shape of a plan that they can follow, in order to keep from running off on crazy threads that keep the story wandering aimlessly.
I got some guidelines for you.
Planning shouldn't be heavy handed. Just a general plan of where you want the overall story to go. Really, you can do this in a page long summary. Don't plan in detail every little thing because it's hard to just plan and not write, it's discourging, and you can plan something really bad in the story and then not want to change it. I plan by keeping a goal or destination i want my character to act out, and then I write them to that goal. That way, my plan is just more like way points.
I plan a little deeper than an overall plan by writing little summarys of scenes, just one or two notebook pages. I write out who's in the scene and what exactly is going on in it and what the outcome I want it to be is. Good dialog and ideas tend to come to me as I do this. Then everything else is execution.
This really works for me. It keeps me on track, but it keeps the long term story very open ended.
posted
One or two problems: first, there is no magic and can really be no magic, since this story is kinda like a historical novel based on a science-fictiony universe. Since there's no magic in the SF-universe, there can't really be any in the historical one (confused yet?) So unfortunately, TUML, this rules out a lot of your suggestions, even the third, since humans developed later than this people. WileyKat, I've considered your idea before, and although it has some merit, I need to make this really hard for my main character. He can't just march in and kill her, there's got to be a reason to wait (and trust me, he needs a good one). I think, though, she is trading off on the legend, at least to scare the local populace. Cat, you've got an idea there, although she has to seem fairly normal until she gathers her bandits. Perhaps she could be pretending to be 'normal'? TUML, believe me, after this I will no longer advocate the unnecessarity (is that a word?) of planning. JK
Posts: 503 | Registered: Sep 2000
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