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INteresting question. Funnily enough, sometimes the first thing I get is the setting. I’m very into the atmospheric setting & its role in the story, so that’s definitely there before I start any planning or research or even think about characters! The other thing though is a pretty formless idea of some sort of ‘issue’ I want to explore. Not big…[Read more]

Wow, well done, Alan. That’s a major bit of validation, and those courses look great. I’ve eyed them a few times, but never bitten, so will be really interested to hear how you get on.

Yes, sorry, meant to congratulate the worthy winner – great, unsettling and dreamlike tale that owns the innate silliness of the tiny guitar and the bizarre phenomenon of the vast ukulele band. Great stuff, and thanks Sea for a challenging and fun competition

That’s great Alan, well done. The courses sound superb

@KazG & @emmad – oooh, I like the phrase ‘thinker on paper’! That sounds a lot closer to what I do. For all my love of graphs and themes and character outlines, and more graphs, very little of the detail gets decided until I’m in the story. I think it’s a little like my old self’s data analysis process – first you gather all the plethora of…[Read more]

Last day to put in an entry for the Den monthly competition, people… 🙂

I’m pretty sure I’ll get the words down. But right now I have only the vaguest plan and I can’t think of even a working title.

Good article, Daeds. I might try to hunt down the Twitter thread to see what else was said.

I saw someone (Hellie Ogden I think) say that 60% of her submissions either fail to meet the submission criteria (format, genre, basic spell checks etc) or are clearly at way too early a draft to be sent out. I was so guilty of this last with my first…[Read more]

Ah, yes. Planning. It’s going…um…

Thanks Raine. I’ve seen the film numerous times over the years (the first being as a very small child) and have got different things from it each time. One reading would definitely be a clash between rival alpha males. And it’s definitely in the ‘high adventure’ tradition, but I do think there’s more to it than that. Not least as ultimatel…[Read more]

Hows the planning going, NaNo Denizens?? I have a title. That’s good, right?

Sorry @daedalus – for some reason your latest didn’t appear till after I’d posted the above. Really interesting breakdown there, I’d seen the film, and it came across to me (many moons ago, I admit) as extremely captivating and clever but essentially typical alpha-male adventure type thing. But no! PErhaps I should watch it again to pick up on all…[Read more]

I think I do a bit of both tbh. I do plot out the character arcs at the start, but things change as I write (as they do, the wee buggers), so by the end I need to do it all again for my major edit. That’s when Julie Cohen’s post-it notes come into play! I’m basically a walking advert for Julie and Craig.

@daedalus re the tragic/heroic thing – it…[Read more]

I was watching the film The Flight of the Phoenix earlier today, and this ‘arc’ kept occuring to me, so for the sake of curiosity I decided to have a look to see if it fit this structure, and if so, how. It’s a bit of an interesting case as it’s an ensemble piece with multiple ‘main’ characters, each with their own arc. I’ll consider it for the…[Read more]

Yeah, I tend to consider matters of formal structure far more in the edit than in the initial draft

Lots of interesting stuff here. I’ve never been much of a planner, and am inherently sceptical of the idea of story structure as something fixed and immutable for many of the reasons Libby raises. As structures go, however, I like this one more than most as it’s fixed to the inner life of the main character rather than something that risks being…[Read more]

Also @squidge – The entire universe makes profound and powerful sense when Craig talks!! 😀

@richardb and @squidge – I don’t think there’s anything wrong in not wanting to use models like these! I have a penchance for graphs, which is probably ~60% of why I love it! No – I like the tie-in between internal and external, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

@athelstone, yeah you’re totally right, I agree it’s foolish to think that any…[Read more]