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This is Elizabeth Stark in the Book Writing World. Welcome to Plan Your Book, Week 11.
Congratulations, everyone. You started this course with an idea, a hope, a partial manuscript, maybe, an intention, fear, courage . . . You started with fragments and daring, and you have taken on many challenges, entered into many conversations, questioned, celebrated, fretted, and written. Whatever else, you are warmed up.
In the weeks and months ahead, as you plunge, day after day, into the writing, you have resources to turn to: a list of questions, a sense of what inspires you, problems and attempted solutions that may face your characters, an understanding of how your characters may change, a strong feeling for the “bad guy’s” point of view that will make for a more powerful and meaningful conflict, ideas about starting point, turning points, midpoint, crisis and climax. The rest, for now, is up to your storyteller.
This week is about encouraging and inspiring your storyteller. This week is about collecting that which will fuel your writing: photographs, facts, books, tarot decks, quotes, allies, writing dates, written goals. This week is about packing for the trip of a lifetime and getting ready to go!
Finally, this week is about organizing your notes—be they on index cards, butcher paper or computer program—into any system that will excite your storyteller should she or he need a jolt to keep going.
Take your index cards (real or virtual). If you have none or only a few, think about sitting down and creating one for each day you will write (30 – 60?) or for each scene that you will write (50 – 100?). Each card may end up being a jumping off point or only what you will reject in favor of something better you come up with in the meanwhile. But you’ll never face the blank page unaided and alone. Try to formulate each card in the concrete terms of scene. What is the conflict? Between whom? Who wins this time? Look, perhaps, for the opposite states or situations that begin and end the scene. You may be able to draw some or many cards from the assignments of this course. In the end, you have or are creating 30 -100 cards. More or less.
Now start sorting them. First make two piles: “yes” or “no.” Intuitively, does this belong in this book or not?
Then take your yes pile and sort it. Make three piles: beginning, middle, and end. Then take the middle pile and order it: beginning of the middle, middle of the middle, end of the middle. Keep organizing the piles until you have a sense of where each card goes. If beginning-middle-end is not your thing, invent your own solitaire and play . . .
Now look through the cards in their order. Do you have a sense of story? There may be some cards you find yourself adding at this point—missing scenes, linking scenes, new problems or attempted solutions, or just ideas (or for memoir or autobiographical fiction, memories) that come to you as you massage your tale.
See if your cards can be mapped onto your Aristotle’s Incline, if you have one. That can help you order them. Spread out, on a big table or the floor, and really deal the cards out in different ways until the story feels dynamic to you. Now put rubber bands around your stacks and number them or otherwise make note of what you’ve done. Then create a place of honor for the cards, in your computer bag, on your desk or desktop. And if you never need them again, more power to you. If you go there first whenever you start to write, more power to you.
Your assignment is to post about your organizing and preparation process. What’s exciting you? What’s challenging you? How are you getting ready to write?
And then, to quote Maurice Sendak, “Let the wild rumpus start!”