Story Plotting

I know I know,

I have been away from blogging for a bit. Again.

Anyway, I'm just going to share a bit about story plotting/book plotting whatever you call it.

I never really used to believe in that. I used to think it was a waste of time.

I have recently learned new things about myself ever since I started writing seriously.

I prefer when my pen touches paper instead of doing things online. Trust me, if I could write my novel entirely by hand, I would but I wouldn't say I have the best hand strength. The last time I used my hands to write long essays was when I sat for my finals during the Law degree and boy am I glad that it's over.

So when I first started this novel, I just had the ideas mostly in my head (I know, very risky, and I certainly wouldn't encourage it for anyone else) and I just jotted it down in a notebook plainly, stating number of paragraphs. Today I got bored and decided to do a pretty massive and hard core one. It can get really tiring but I cannot stress how much better I feel now.

Initially I thought I was going to do 30 chapters. Now as I mind map it out I realise some chapters are really redundant and can be erased completely (OUCH, but I admit, it's kinda nonsense) Of course this is just a thought right now at this stage but I have told myself to do it every once in awhile so I don't lose track or digress from the story.

So whilst improvising, I decided to do a Chapter by chapter outline. Main things to cover, situations that happen, climaxes, whether or not it should be a cliff hanger chapter, ya da ya da.

Then I also have character plots which I had the most fun doing. It starts with figuring out their first and last names, their dress codes, attitudes, got carried away and started doing date of births and random things like the kind of music they like. This made me grow closer to them and now I feel I have more things to talk about them rather than just my protagonist. Previously I just had their first names, and some default names as I couldn't figure out what I should name them.

I tried to make it as fancy as I can, so that I don't get bored when I go through it in a few days or weeks when I need to refer to something. I won't lie, this simple thing already took a lot of time! So art & craft and trying to be artsy takes a lot of time. Don't be one of those morons who look at painters/artist and go "He's just a painter" or "My grandmother can draw/paint better than this". Try it and then you will know the difficulty of it. Yes, as of recently, I have a very short fuse. I can't really take assholes and "know-it-alls" as much as I could handle in the past so please don't be one of them. Appreciate everyone and if you can't, just try to appreciate.

I'm sure this would have been easy for the ones who have done tons of novels by now, but every one has to start some where, and nobody said it was going to be an easy route.

Till the next time guys. Take care.

Love,

Naia

#storyplot #plotting #bookplotting #bookplot