Stage 2 of Preparing for a Novel
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This is the follow-up to my own MindMapping to Prepare for a Novel article posted a week ago. In that article I introduced you to my concept (with The Sentence) for my NaNoWriMo novel, The Pod Novel II (a working title only) and to some work I did in initiating some ideas using a mindmap tool to both brainstorm and cluster some ideas.
After those initial mindmaps I had some more work to do to ever contemplate starting my Novel on 1st November. I had some research to do on some timelines and milestone events, and some scenes prep work. I also wanted to develop some characters a little further in my writing application of choice before moving back into mindmapping for further exploration.
Here, briefly, I’ll show you that prep work, using two writing tools - Liquid Story Binder and Writers Blocks.
Getting My Writing Base Prepared
This is a screenshot of my writing base setup in Liquid Story Binder by Black Obelisk Software. This is a full writing program, with many features, and is my writing tool of choice for using on both my PCs or portably via a USB dongle.
My Main Character mindmap has had the features I devised for my split-personality character copied over into a LSB character dossier. You can see her above in the top right of the LSB workspace - Character A and B are the same person, only leading different parallel lives. I have entered all the features including descriptions and behaviours into each dossier.
LSB allows each dossier to hold one image. It took me a while to find a before and after image of the character which I was satisfied with. Character A is a slimmed down and glamourous version of Character B’s ‘before’. Choosing an image is quite important - I now only need to glance quickly and I basically have most of what each character is to me.
I have also created the all-important secondary character I needed. He’s currently called Chris. And he’s turned into the main narrator of the story in my scenes. But I didn’t want to emphasis his story or character too much at this point. So I chose an image of a torso, without a face. He could therefore be anyone.
To the left of the character dossiers you will see some more modules in my writing workspace within Liquid Story Binder. There is a ‘builder’ module which I use to write out general ideas - this is where the initial Sentence was drafted. And I will use a builder for each chapter I write - each item in the builder will be a scene.
Above the builder is a simple file listing, showing all files and modules I’ve so far created. To the far left is the novel gallery, holding all images I am using. Sometimes when building entire worlds, I may have multiple galleries going on, but not this time. I’m only after the very barest basics to get the novel underway. I’ve imported in my mindmap images into here also. These can be enlarged to fullsize with one click onto them, for reference should I need it.
As my novel is set across a time period from the mid 80’s through to 2001, I was thinking about setting up a playlist of appropriate hit music from the decades to set me into the mood. LSB can hold playlists also. And it has many other features you may like to check out.
Affiliate Link : The Liquid Story Binder features.
Ready with those Scenes
How Many Scenes Do I Need?
Firstly, I’m taking the easy-route out. This whole NaNoWriMo thing is getting me stressed out with people watching my either success or failure, and it’s taken the shine off my actual story idea. So I’m going the easy route. Just heading for my 50,000 words. That’s 1667 words a day, for the 30 days.
That’s do-able. So round it to 2000 then. Okay…so 2000 words per day will give me a scene a day, for 30 days. Thirty scenes, maybe three per chapter, that’s ten chapters. And once that’s all over, many of those scenes will need to get bigger and better, maybe some more chapters too. But 30 scenes at a goal of 2000 words - that’s doable, that’s my NaNoWriMo effort. That’s planned.
The Scenes by Sentence
The image you see above is my scene blocks, written in a program called Writer’s Blocks. Although LSB has a good timeline and grid-like functionality, I prefer to have scenes and blocks which I can juggle around merrily, just like the sticky-note approach.
Writer’s Blocks is my own software of choice, allowing formatting by card, columnar layouts (mine are labelled chapters), and colour-coding. There are other good notes-like or card-like programs out there. Super Notecards by Mindola is another well worth trying. Writer’s Blocks also has an editorial panel, where the cards can become your first draft, plus a manuscript function. However I prefer the writing environment found within LSB for that. For drag and drop electronic cards, I find Writer’s Blocks to be perfect, and there is also a clustering function available in Writer’s Blocks where you want a simple free-form way to play with ideas.
In Writer’s Blocks I started my basic scene-planning, using one or two sentences to describe the scene’s contents. I also colour-coded the cards according to the point of view of the narration. Chris, now my main narrator in the later-day, appears with his scenes in yellow. My main character (still nameless) appears in her various dimensions through the main story element - a diary.
I have included a secondary labelling system on top of the column chapter titles - this time identifying the timeframe I have chosen for the diary excerpts, and some milestone or event targets I want to make sure to discuss in the scenes for that chapter.
Like last time I attempted a novel, I expect these scene cards to alter, to move, or to become impassable as the story evolves in my writing. At the end of my writing time I actually put aside some time to go back to these scene cards, update them, and also do some forward planning a little more.
Next Up…
Okay, I’m mostly prepared for November 1st now, but with some reservations. So I want to go back to exploring some of the scenes, and characters with mindmaps. I don’t want to over-plan those scenes - there’s no point as they will surely change, but I want to do some more mapping of links, so that I don’t lose the plot when writing. You may see that tomorrow (unless I get caught painting a bedroom, which is in the plans also).
Links from this Article:
- Me at NaNoWriMo (please buddy me)
- Liquid Story Binder (affiliate link)
- Writer’s Blocks software
- Super Notecard software
- MindMapping to Prepare for a Novel
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