marycatelli: (A Birthday)
how to develop an idea. . .

The biggest question is often whether you should go haring off every wild idea that comes along.

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marycatelli: (Strawberries)
How do you build an intricate fantasy world that holds up to intensive fan interrogation?

The first points I think of are -- what are the stories that let you have such a world?  Since, after all, you can make it as intricate as you like without the fans ever getting wind of it.
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Part of [livejournal.com profile] bittercon
marycatelli: (A Birthday)
By which I mean not the theme the unity of which Aristotle praised so highly and so wisely, but what your English teacher taught -- which is certainly an aspect of Aristotle's.

I don't see many works whose major failure lies in a break down in theme, but it can be done.

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marycatelli: (Strawberries)
Working merrily along on the outline, trying to determine whether a certain marriage really should happen before the hero and heroine's, and if so, whether it really ought to be after this mission, and at what point they ought to find maggots in the flour. . . and in the process, jotting down yet another note about something that can be slipped in somewhere, with the heroine discussing patience, and waiting for an attack on the fortress as she waits for the herbs in her garden to sprout and grow -- and she has more evidence of her patience being necessary than they do, since she gets sprouts, and the attack can come from nowhere --

And I finish the note, and wince.

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marycatelli: (Default)
grumble grumble grouse grouse

It's impossible, when revising, to entirely forget that the story's length will be going up or down with just about every line that's touched.  Particularly if it's at an awkward length.
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marycatelli: (Default)
and promptly treats it like a cat toy.  Which, to be sure, is perhaps less annoying that when she takes a shine to an idea and thinks it a precious and wonderful thing. . . .

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marycatelli: (Default)
Opening a novel with shifts between wide-separated, aparrently unconnected characters has its virtues.

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marycatelli: (Default)
and has fired off that gun, or not. . . .he can become a problem.

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marycatelli: (Default)
I try -- I try very hard -- to nail down all the plot in the outlines.  But the best laid plans. . . . there's nothing like sitting down to write to discover what weaknesses your outline has.
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marycatelli: (A Birthday)
Subplots.  Where writing resembles juggling. . .
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marycatelli: (Default)
It's amazing what it can do really -- and sometimes it's nice, and sometimes it's not, because the moment you lay on the colors, your muse can look over your shoulder and say, ooh, nice toy.

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marycatelli: (Default)
Aristotle observed somewhere that the one essential gift for a poet (read imaginative author), the only one that could not be taught, was an eye for resemblances.

And the muse, being metaphorical herself, can come up with a number for the work of writing as well as the matter.  (Though, like all analogies, they are imprecise; a precise metaphor would cease to be a metaphor and become an identity.)
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shortening

Apr. 30th, 2011 07:01 pm
marycatelli: (Default)
stick the story in the cheese press and start to squeeze. . . . sigh
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marycatelli: (Default)
time passing. . . how much time passes between one scene and the next?  I'm rather bad at giving hints at it.

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marycatelli: (Default)
Sometimes you need to add some scenes to the middle of the story.
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marycatelli: (Default)
The quest structure has its advantages -- would have to, to remain a perennial plot -- but it has its requirements too.
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marycatelli: (Default)
Once you decide to make your story multi-POV it pretty much has to be multi-POV.

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marycatelli: (Default)
I'm going to have to look at the earlier sections for an outline.  Some villains are going to be POV characters.

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marycatelli: (Default)
Sometimes, your story falls into the Unpublishable Void.  Say, at 45,000 words.  There aren't markets, not at that length.

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