Juiced On Writing

I’ve been working on planning out my latest novel over the last few days. This is a novel which for some time has been unable to be planned – in that it just doesn’t seem to ‘want’ any kind of plan or preparation to go down on paper. (In writing, at least). I got wise, finally, and beat the sucker out of me. Using a combination of a few graphical tools I’ve finally been able to work on it, to the minimal stage where the novel (which has taken on a life of its own) seems happy with the state of play.

Rather than show you how I went about this with my actual tools – and these outputs do sit on my computer in files and a directory, which is where the real work will take place when I begin writing – I thought that given the novel seems to want to remain less structured than others before it, and in a more conceptual and graphical way – well, fine. I will then show you the concepts in a graphical way also, in a series of screenshots.

Introduction to My Second Life Writing Tools

Through the Writing Shack Window

To get your head around it, Second Life can provide both a supportive community of writers (a good look at this can be found with the Writers in the (Virtual) Sky blog) and you can use the environment of Second Life as an environment to write in.

Yes. Totally.

I’ve previously written about my own creation of a virtual ‘Writer’s Shack’, and I use it for a base in which to put all my virtual writing stuff (which you’re about to see). No, that doesn’t mean you can actually write in there – but I use the Shack as a background to my actual writing (or in this case, writing planning). So, I logon to Second Life, and walk to my writing shack, either sit at the virtual desk there, typing on my virtual laptop (all supplied by in-built animations in the chair or laptop itself) or I sit at my virtual grungey couch. I then open up all the rest of the tools necessary to my writing, or planning prep, and have Second Life in the background.

My virtual shack is setup with a complete ambient scenery – I play some bird calls from my New Zealand home country – there are calls from native birds, and a chirping cricket sound. Beside the shack, there’s a large hidden cave with waterfall – so you can hear the gentle sound of water also, if you listen hard. Above my property I have a circling seagull, and his (I presume its a ‘he’) shriek occasionally penetrates into the cabin also.

With Second Life playing in the background, my real life writing is accompanied by gentle ambient sounds.

(Well, they would be aside from the one sound output I’ve not mentioned – my chicken farming experiment. Occasionally the shrill peep-peep-peep of hungry chicks in my coop wakes me up from a natural loll.)

If I’m in a different mood, I have a jukebox in the shack which can play heavy rock or ambient music via the fifty or so internet radio channels programmed into it. All these sounds simply pipe through Second Life, out via my speaker system and as background to my actual typing on my keyboard in real life.

Sunset and Pizza - what more could the writer want?

My virtual desk with laptop and mouse sits under a window, and in my shack I’ve surrounded myself with many other writing implements and reminders. These provide a real kick in the bottom to actually get writing. I have posters on the wall which make me feel inspired, and these can be changed quickly with new textures, so I never get bored.

Many of the excellent writing groups and businesses in-world also supply writing equipment for inspiration. I have collected a can of alphabet soup for writers, a marathon bar for writers sits on my desk, and there are clipboards, virtual paper and writing books sitting around the place also. It’s fun, and an interestingly inspiring environment to work within (or without, as the case is).

On my ram-shackle coffee table (propped up on concrete bricks) I’ve got another laptop (for when I want my avatar to sit on that couch and work) and a half eaten pizza and can of non-diet coke. Sustenance is important for the writer, yes?

And if I don’t feel like writing, I can always read. I have a reading ottoman that allows my avatar to lie down and read, and I can actually read ‘real’ books in-world – and buy these also. Many Second Life magazines come free also. They work with flip-page technology, and you can re-size many of them for readibility.

But of real importance and relevance to this post is my WIP writing board, which started off as a purchase of a large low-prim blackboard. This sits on my working wall beside the desk. As I can change the texture (or picture) inside the frame, I decided to create both blackboard and cork board working images of my own novel in progress, as it’s developed. So, here I’m going to show you both WIP boards in-world. Although, as I said earlier, I have bigger working copies of these outside of Second Life, available as I move on with the planning and preparation stage.

MindMapping the First Brain Dump

Shhh! Novel hard at work, and it's late, too.

Theme, motivation, what’s the story really about? I find that once I really start trying to document this, other ideas spring to life. Using my trusty mindmapping tool (I use Mindjet MindManager, but many others will do) I set about starting a braindump of ideas, starting off with ideas on the theme and motivations behind my main character.

This novel is character-led. However, the main character is not a hero by anyone’s estimations, and ends up in prison for her crime. Struggling with the fact that I wanted to build a character who was ultimately never going anywhere, I also had the realisation that this wouldn’t also lead to possible serial characters. From my original brain dump map came another main character to fit this need. And from that character came the point of view, and a large sub-plot which could be taken out into a series of books, should this one ever find publication.

That’s as far as I went in any planning treatment however. The mindmap itself is very shallow, but I then took it out graphically as a screenshot, and enhanced it using graphics also. From a mindmap with only three roots off the main central theme, I added the blackboard elements you may make out, using my graphics editor (I don’t have photoshop, but Corel’s Paint Shop Pro does an equivable job). And I added some chalk figures and handwriting to add to the blackboard theme. I have some To Dos for research I need to concentrate on, and some possible setting lists written down on my blackboard (graphic) also.

As I’ve created all this as separate components (the mindmaps can be changed as I go) and combined into a graphic, I can use the large graphic to enhance my inspiration, perhaps as a desktop wallpaper on my working computer, or I can simply use it within Second Life on my WIP blackboard. After uploading the image, and putting it into the contents of the board on my wall in-world, I have the following reminder for my novel :-

Image Boarding the Main Characters

Working with the Character Image Board

The original mindmap – plus extras added around the sides – triggered a need to further develop my understanding of the two main characters. Normally I have a rough idea of the age and start off with a simple internet search for relevant photographs. Yesterday I started on this work, but ended up developing an entire career and background history for both characters. What I didn’t want to do – because this novel doesn’t seem to ‘want it’, was end up writing streams of pages of character dossiers etc. I wanted to keep my preplanning to a more graphical element this time, and not super-impose anything other than images overtop of what I was already thinking.

To store my images, I decided that the blackboard concept could readily become a corkboard. I found a cork background and began building the image board onto that, complete with pin tacks and sticky notes, poloroids and other graphics to enhance the model.

As I had chosen the career of Forensic Psychology for my main narrator, I went more in-depth in researching her career. Sitting on this simple image board is a fake ID for the London Metropolitan police force, and from that, I suddenly had to fill in a name for her. So she has a name now, and it all feels right.

The cork image board took several hours to create, but behind the scenes I have also implemented quite a lot of research to get an understanding of these characters. Because of the specifics, I also have a lot more research to do, before I can consider if I’m ready to go with the actual first draft. But developing the characters using an image storyboard in this way was a method which worked very well for me. Within one day, I had the characters, and the story has developed well along with them.

The framed board within my Second Life writing shack can change from the blackboard texture / image to the corkboard one with one simple click. Any additional images or work I upload into it will be accessed quickly also. The resolution is big enough that I can zoom in with my camera tools, and read all the fine detail if I need the prompt. And with one-click access to all these novel images, I have developed a very efficient prompt to my writing.

Other Tools Used

As this is a graphics intensive project, I am using software – both client and online to create my models for the novel in progress. These include the Second Life tools I’ve gone into depth with above, and Mindjet MindManager, with a graphics editor which can take screenshots of the projects in these tools, if the files can’t be exported automatically into a graphic format such as .jpeg. Most do allow for this, however.

In the character image board you see above, for instance, I have worked on and inserted a family tree. It has been placed on a notepaper, set centre-top of the corkboard. This family tree was created as a simple flow-chart image in a free online program called Draw Anywhere. I do have a family tree program on another computer, but for the work involved, decided I only needed a simple chart. Draw Anywhere allows the export of its files into PDF. From the PDF – which I have filed in my WIP directory, I took a screenshot of the image, and inserted it only the notepaper for the sake of the image board.

Coming up, I have some more research / background work to do, and some scenes to plan out. I normally do my scene cards in a commercial tool I like, called Writer’s Blocks. Writer’s Blocks allows you to view the cards in a structured card form, or as an outline, or as a manuscript. Or I can simply take a screenshot of the blocks with large titles, and stick that into a graphic for my corkboard if I want.

Another popular (and less expensive) notecard software for writers is Mindola’s Super Notecard (note – requires Java). Again, there are various export options and I could take screenshots to act as a WIP board as I went.

My own scene cards become the outline plan for the novel draft itself, but 80% of the time, as the novel progresses, the scenes and outline change also, so these are kept updated on a daily basis. I doubt that it will be efficient to take these moving cards into Second Life as a graphic, but I will put up a corkboard or blackboard of some initial critical scene thoughts to start off with.

There are many other worthwhile tools available online to make use of for the writer, and with the use of screenshots and exports, I am developing a graphical package for pre-planning of my next novel. Putting it into such a graphical format is also having the added benefit of providing two interlinked writing environments for me – real life and virtually. And it’s really making me inspired to start on that first draft (once I’ve done the minimal research I require).

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