Plotting

How are you plotting your novel? I tried the stream of consciousness method and ended up with incoherent shit, so I'm starting to take plotting seriously.

>pic related, how the greatest author of all time does it

Greatest author of all time?

Really, kid?

Heh. Stick around here for a while and you'll soon figure out that you've been brainwashed by the liberal media gay agenda machine.

REAL intellectuals read the greatest ACTUAL authors, not trash like Rowling. I'm thinking, of course, of the likes of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and Gass.

not funny.

Whereas calling Rowling the GOAT is absolutely hysterical

no one said that.

Well, it starts 1) with an idea, maybe a beginning, maybe a finale, maybe a world. Then 2) I try to think if there's more to this idea, is there a world behind it? It's important to not try and force it. Are there pieces there? 3) I begin writing.

That's how it goes. The first draft is usually about 10,000-20,000 words. It's abysmal, of course. I think to myself, is there more here? If there is, I keep fleshing it out. If there isn't, can it.

Yeah, I wrote it out to about 20000 words but then I got pissed off because no narrative emerged

I just kind of write a plot synopsis with major details to start, then hash out each paragraph of this, adding and imagining character interactions with each other and the environment in each zone of this rough outline, then finally assemble the pieces.

1. Have general idea
2. Frame the idea by writing out supporting information
3. Write something completely different from the original idea with maybe a few similar themes and setting

I let an idea stew in my head for a long time (I call it marinating) and then one day when I have the time job just crank out what I can and sometimes more stuff comes out and sometimes I realize certain things don't. I'm only writing short stories at the moment, but it seems to work.

I'll write something, then save it as New Text Document, forget about it for a few months, wonder if I wrote a certain part yet, and spend several hours only to realize it has been lost or perhaps never existed to begin with.

I'm currently considering transitioning to a SCRUM type set up.

Atm I'm simply saving multiple copies of an ms word doc with the filename as the date of last edit.

I'm aware this is slightly retarded

Is there a software geared towards writing? Maybe something where I could keep a catalog of the characters, the main plot, the themes and other stuff while also being used to write?

Yeah its called pen and paper faggot

:'(

what if I don't have them where I live?

>what if I don't have them where I live?
Where the fuck do you live that doesn't have pen and paper? Atlantis?

How to write a book

Step 1: Develop an amphetamine habit

That's it.

Got a ritalin script, still deciding wether I should pop them every day or not

t-that's not relevant

holy shit i never thought about turning line paper sideways like that.

what a fucking genius

"I do not approve of the so-called hippies, but I do not approve of any government control over drugs. The government does not have the right to tell any individual what to do with his or her health and life. You probably know that I received a prescription for the stimulant Benzedrine, or “speed.” I can say rationally that it increases my happiness and my productivity. For example, some time ago I went to Studio 54, because I love to dance on speed. I took fifteen speed pills, and I got into a contest with Liza Minnelli over who could roar most like a jaguar. She simply sounded like a stupid lion.

Then the inside of my head began to sound like a jet engine and so I went to the bathroom. I took maybe ten more speed pills and sat in a stall and wrote a new chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.” Perhaps twenty-five thousand words, all on toilet paper. I cannot include these words in a new edition, alas, because I did not write them so much as encode them on the toilet paper by biting it.

As I write this, I am drinking speed, and you cannot stop me. You cannot stop me, America, with your altruism and your Alan Alda and your Fresca cans biting at my skin. I shall speed across this country like a great high-speed train and the U.S. shall be forever changed in my wake.

Yes, I am both a speedboat and a speed train, and I will mix metaphors if I wish and bend language to my own reality like rails of garbage steel. Because Ronald Reagan has deposed Jimmy Carter, and I predict that by 2013 my influence will be profound, and a new generation of leaders will hallow my name, and devotion to self-interest and capitalism and the free market will not be the exception but the rule, and these leaders will naturally share my disapproval of religion, my support of abortion rights, and my love of Godiva chocolates. I have to stop writing now, because I have chewed through my typewriter.

idk I found this a pretty charming response

I always wondered how mystery/thriller/crime fiction novelists plan out their plots.

Goblet of Fire is more complex than Ulysses, which is merely complicated.

1. Think of ending
2. Reverse engineer it to a beginning while obfuscating as many details as possible. Degree of obfuscation should be proportional to density of the geographical shape of the novel.

I'm not sure. I'm narrating what I've learned during my homelessness (in not homeless anymore) and so far my best material is produced when drunk. I am so far around 60000 words and roughly 8 handles of whisky into it. I just want to create it on one of those make your own books like Solentro and have it in my apartment.

will you publish it or just print one for yourself?

>stream of consciousness
>plotting it out
Smh

Every other day; you'll be able to have some saved up and tolerance will take longer to develop.

I use scapple. Easily editable and without the messiness of physically doing it. It also makes dealing with projects of large scale more easy. It works great for other projects too.

I found that yWriter or just about any personal wiki software works well for that

I treat it like building a bridge
I have the start-point, and the climax, then I create a bunch of other plot points that are important to telling the story and I shittily lash it all together with words.
Then I go back and start editing it and reinforcing the bridge so it doesn't collapse and send everyone into a ravine when you put weight on it.

I do what I call 'the mcElroy'
I take a piece of paper and put random blobs of paint on it, when I have about 5 or 6 blobs of different colors I take a sip of one of the colors and spray it on the paper. When it's all dry I start to put names to every single dot of paint and city names to the big blobs. Then I make up some short stories and somehow link everything together

This is only the beginning.

This is, literally, the stupidest thing I've ever read.

i've never described it in those terms but that's basically what i do too.

>elaborate crime

>ridiculous conjecture and stereotyping by the detective

>turns out to be right

Are you a GULL?

You should stretch your legs friend. Dubs.