JaneShuff

I’m another one whose eyes glaze over at charts, grids, questionnaires and all the rest of it, and find the idea of forcing a story into a set framework very inhibiting. I’d come to suspect that lack of a coherent framework in my writing was one reason I’ve never got on the road to publication, but when I applied the 7 Cs to my last effort it…[Read more]

Thanks Sea – not heard of the ‘7 Cs’ but it makes perfect sense. Perhaps it is that it can’t be immediately applied from the start, i.e. you (meaning one, and definitely I) have to write quite a lot of scenes involving character and events before the story line appears, after which tweaking into shape can take place.

I’m relieved to hear I’m not the only one to have been unable to find a theoretical how-to-plot scheme that works for them, and I really have tried because plotting is certainly what I find hardest, not being a natura story-teller.
Screenwriter Jeremy Sheldon did a brilliant presentation at a Festival of Writing weekend, (2014?) and I’ve been…[Read more]

I always sit in on these ‘story arc’ kinds of sessions in the hope I’ll find one that works for me. I never have…

I do have two that help remind me of the essentials though.

The triangle…I learnt it on the self edit course (now run by Jericho Writers) and blogged about it here:…[Read more]

In every case I have started with a main character, a beginning, and end and a rough idea of how to get to the end.

However, my characters have a way of bossing me around.

In one novel the guy gets the girl, but as I wrote it became clear that the girl was wrong for him and I then had to write a sequel getting him out of that fix (eventually the…[Read more]

I start with a name – a character who rattles a stick along the boundaries of my subconscious. Someone who, when I am not looking, will sneak through a gap in the railings and broadcast snippets of conversation to pique my interest. If this character stalks me when I am waling the dog, or when I’m driving, then I might allow him/her free-write…[Read more]

I normally have a character and and end in sight when I start. Apart from that, I don’t do much planning at all – my brain simply doesn’t work like that. I’d love to be more organised, but personally it’s stifling. I am full of admiration for peeps who do the whole character file/in depth plot/post-it scene arrangements etc!

I do a lot of…[Read more]

I outline before I start by knowing the probable ending or at any rate an ending I’m heading for – it could change though hasn’t done so far. And I know what the midpoint or turning point will be – the tightening up when the main character(s) are stuck with what’s happened and have to deal with it in a focused way. This applies to short fiction as…[Read more]