6.4 KiB
[D][Q] Advice on planning?
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2u66d2/dq_advice_on_planning/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-01-30T05:57:30
Post:
I've pretty much been writing by the seat of my pants my entire life. I have a vague idea of what I want to happen, but that's liable to change whenever I think of anything better.
What I'm working on now, while not exactly rational fiction, I'm thinking will require heavy plotting. To avoid getting into too many details, let's just say it's going to go through a heavy amount of Cerebus Syndrome, but gradually enough that it doesn't suffer from Mood Whiplash.
Given the predominance of well-planned stories in /r/rational, I thought this would be a good place to ask about this.
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
I have lately been using Dan Harmon's story circle method for story plotting. If Campbell's monomyth is descriptive, this is prescriptive. Part of it is just a breakdown of story parts, but it also incorporates some of the snowflake method, which I think it one of the more important things to do with plotting.
The snowflake method is like this:
- Figure out the core of your story, then write out all the major, high level plot points as one simple sentence each. You shouldn't have much more than a handful of sentences - if you have more than that, simplify.
- Break each of those sentences down into further description of the series of events that they contain. "The protagonists break into the castle" is a sentence that could encompass a half dozen chapters - maybe part of breaking into the castle is wooing a chambermaid, pickpocketing a guard, crafting a magic spell to breach the defenses, having a conversation on the ethics of overthrowing the king, etc.
- Keep doing this until you have roughly scene-sized chunks. Then, write those scenes, and you'll have a properly plotted book.
If you're interested, I wrote up a three part series prior to National Novel Writing Month: part 1, part 2, part 3. The first four (unedited and very raw) chapters that resulted from that planning can be seen here, though I have to say that I didn't feel the need to hew too close to my plotting.
If you want to shift your tone, even gradually ... that's a tough thing to do. You run the risk of attracting people that will love the early stuff but grow disenchanted with the later stuff. It's quite possible that you don't care about audience at all, but if you do, it's better to keep the tone relatively consistent. Include a lot of foreshadowing of the bad stuff that's going to happen, and keep in grim comic relief (or however you're planning to balance your moods).
u/None [+1] (2 hours later)
Thanks! This is definitely going to be helpful. I remember you posting this method before, and I honestly should have remembered it now, because it seems pretty cool. I'm not sure how helpful it will be for the long-term serial publication plan I have in mind, but I'll definitely read it and get as much from it as possible. I may end up PMing you for advice in the next few days; is that alright?
My intent is to begin it kind of like Haruhi Suzumiya: very self-aware, playing with the idea of clichéd storytelling, but overall not too dark or complex (though I've heard the light novels can get complex). The way I see it is, if I enjoy both that show and things like Evangelion or Akira, I'm likely to be able to attract an audience that feels the same way.
Good advice on adding in a bit of comedy, though. That's often an issue I have when getting into what I consider the real meat of a story: I make it too dark. I'll keep that in mind.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
Sure, PM away.
Serials are kind of a different beast in terms of plotting, but Harmon's advice (and what he tries to do in his television shows) is to think of each installment as a single story with a beginning, middle, and end, which is embedded within the larger story. If you read through that whole series, he actually talks about the television format a lot, which I think shares many similarities with writing a serial. Each installment should be its own story, but also move along the larger story, which means that you can treat the whole thing as sort of being like a fractal.
u/None [+1] (2 hours later)
That makes sense. And then each paragraph should move along the chapter, and each sentence the paragraph, and each word the sentence, and each letter the word, and each pixel the... Why did you have to mention fractals? Now I'll be stuck thinking about that all night.
Jokes aside, that's definitely a good point. I completely forgot that Harmon was principally a television writer, too. His system might very well be even more helpful than I thought.
u/OffColorCommentary [+2] (3 hours later)
I haven't tried my hand at writing, but I have made a lot of games. Calibrate your grain of salt appropriately.
What I've found is that you need to nail down your thematic pillars and, in abstract, how you plan to achieve them, and write all of that down. Figure out what structure is required, and then studiously stop before filling in the fun parts.
Coming up with all the details and bringing it to life is a lot of fun, so it's easy to write it all down and plan to convert it to your finished product, but if you do it all up front then later on you'll lose your connection with what made the premise fun. And then you won't be able to make it fun for the reader either, or worse just get discouraged and give up on the work.
I'd also recommend the book Save The Cat, which is the best attempt I've read to actually establish what a good story structure looks like. It should be more directly transferable to writing than it is to games anyway.